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SELECTIONS 



FROM THE PROSE WRITINGS OF 



1/ 



MATTHEW ARNOLD 



Edited zvith 
Notes and an Introduction 

BY 

LEWIS E. GATES 

Assistant Professor of English, Harvard University 





NEW YORK 



TWO COPIES NEGElVEI 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



1897 
L. 



.Ct3 



Copyright, 1897, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT & CO. 



^'03f3\ 



THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
RAHVVAY, N. J. 



^// 



PREFACE. 



These Selections from Arnold are meant to go with 
the Selections from Newman already included in E7ig' 
lish Readings. Newman and Arnold were both Oxford 
men ; both were devoted believers in the academic 
ideal; both discussed and dealt practically with edu- 
cational problems, and yet both touched life in many 
other ways and are remembered as men of letters or 
leaders of thought, rather than as mere academicians. 
Although Arnold never imposed himself on his gener- 
ation as did Newman, never ruled the imaginations 
of large masses of men, or was so prevailing and 
picturesque a figure as Newman, yet no less than New- 
man he represents one distinct phase of nineteenth- 
century academic culture; from 1855 to 1870 he was 
probably the man of letters whom the younger genera- 
tion at Oxford most nearly accepted as their natural 
spokesman. 

The Selections aim to present, in the briefest possible 
compass, what is most characteristic in Arnold's criti- 
cism of literature and life. His conception of the 
critic was as the guardian of culture, as called upon 
to pass judgment on the various expressions of life, 
and especially upon books in their relation to life, 
and to determine their influence on the temper and 
ideals of the public. He is to be an adept in life, 



iv PREFACE. 

a diviner of the essentials that underlie the multi- 
form play of human energy ; he must know life inti- 
mately; and being concerned that life shall have its 
best quality, he will strive for this perfection not 
only through what he says about books, but also 
through direct comment on those modes of living — 
those ideals — which his analysis and imagination 
detect as ruling his contemporaries. In obedience 
to this conception of the critic, Arnold had much 
to say not only on poetry and belles lettres, but on 
politics, religion, theology, and the general social con- 
ditions of his time. The Selections include one or 
more of his characteristic comments on each of these 
topics. 

It should also be noted that many of the Selections 
are complete essays or lectures, not mere extracts. 
T/ie Function of Criticism at the Present Time is an en- 
tire essay; On Translating Homer is the entire first 
lecture on this subject; Oxford and Philistinism and 
Culture and Anarchy are entire prefaces or introduc- 
tions; Compulsory Education and " Life a Dream " are 
entire Letters; Literature and Sciefice and Emerson are 
entire Discourses — two of the three that Arnold gave 
repeatedly in America. His Discourses in A7nerica 
stood specially high in Arnold's favor; shortly before 
his death he spoke of the book as that " by which, of 
all his prose-writings, he should most wish to be re- 
membered." 

The Selections are believed also to present Arnold's 
style adequately throughout its whole range. In some 
respects his style, despite possible faults of manner 
that will later be considered, is the best model avail- 



PREFACE. V 

able for students of prose. It is not so idiosyncratic 
as are the styles of Carlyle or Mr. Ruskin, not so 
inimitably individual; it is more conventional and 
unimpassioned, more expressive of the mood of prose, 
with little of the color and few of the overtones of 
poetry. Yet it is an intensely vital style, and every- 
where exemplifies not simply the logic of good writing, 
but the intimate correspondence of phrase with thought 
and mood that great writers of prose continually secure. 
Individual it therefore is, and yet not arbitrarily or 
forbiddingly individual. Its merits and possible short- 
comings are analyzed at length in the Introduction. 

The more important dates in Arnold's life and a list 
of his main publications are given just after the Intro- 
duction. A brief sketch of his life may be found in 
Men of the Time, ed. 1887; a longer, more appreciative 
sketch, in Eminent Persons, or Biographies reprinted 
from the Times, vol. iv. Mr. Andrew Lang's article on 
Arnold, in the Century for April, 1882, also contains 
much interesting biographical detail. 

Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 
August, 1897. 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction 



I. 

ir. 
III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

Chronology, 

Bibliography 



Arnold's Manner, 
Criticism of Life, 
Theory of Culture, 
Ethical Bias, 
Literary Criticism, 
Appreciations, 
Style, 
Relation to his Times, 



PAGE 

ix 

xiv 

xxii 

xxxii 

xliii 

11 

lix 

Ixxvii 

Ixxxix 

xc 



Selections : * 

The Function of Criticism (1865), 
On Translating Homer (1861), 
Philology and Literature (1S62), 
The Grand Style (1862), 
Style in Literature (1866), 
Nature in English Poetry (1866), 
Poetry and Science (1863), 
Literature and Science (1882), 



I 
40 
67 

83 
88 

93 
102 
104 



* The date assigned each Selection is that of its earliest appear- 
ance in print. 



VIU 



CONTENTS. 



Oxford and Philistinism (1865), 
Philistinism (1863), 
Culture and Anarchy (1867), 
Sweetness and Light (1867), 
Hebraism and Hellenism (1868), 
The Dangers of Puritanism (1868 
The Not Ourselves (1871), 
Paris and the Senses (1873), . 
The Celt and the Teuton (1866), 
The Modern Englishman (1866), 
Compulsory Education (1S67), . 
" Life a Dream " (1870), 
America (1869), 
Emerson (1884), . 
Notes 



PAGE 

132 
139 
144 
147 
181 

193 
204 
218 
224 

235 
242 
250 
258 
265 
295 



INTRODUCTION. 
I. 

Admirers of Arnold's prose find it well to admit 
frankly that his style has an unfortunate knack of 
exciting prejudice. Emerson has somewhere spoken 
of the unkind trick fate plays a man when it gives him 
a strut in his gait. Here and there in Arnold's prose, 
there is just a trace — sometimes more than a trace — of 
such a strut. He condescends to his readers with a 
gracious elaborateness ; he is at great pains to make 
them feel that they are his equals ; he undervalues him- 
self playfully ; he assures us that " he is an unlearned 
belletristic trifler";' he insists over and over again 
that " he is an unpretending writer, without a phil- 
osophy based on interdependent, subordinate, and 
coherent principles."^ All this he does, of course, 
smilingly ; but the smile seems to many on whom its 
favors fall, supercilious ; and the playful undervalua- 
tion of self looks shrewdly like an affectation. He is 
very debonair, — this apologetic writer ; very self-as- 
sured ; at times even jaunty.^ 

Thorough-going admirers of Arnold have always 

^ Celtic Liter attiv, p. 21. 

'^ Culture and Anarchy, p. 152 ; Friendship" s Garland, p. 273. 

^ Various critics have complained of Arnold's tone and bearing. 
Mr. Saintsbury, for example, objects to his " mincing" manner ; 
Professor Jovvett,' to his " flippancy." 



X TNTRODUCTIOISr. 

relished this strain in his style ; they have enjoyed its 
delicate challenge, the nice duplicity of its innuendoes; 
they have found its insinuations and its covert, satirical 
humor infinitely entertaining and stimulating. More- 
over, however seriously disposed they may have been, 
however exacting of all the virtues from the author of 
their choice, they have been able to reconcile their 
enjoyment of Arnold with their serious inclinations, 
for they have been confident that these tricks of 
manner implied no essential or radical defect in 
Arnold's humanity, no lack either of sincerity or of 
earnestness or of broad sympathy. 

Such admirers and interpreters of Arnold have 
been amply justified of their confidence since the 
publication in 1895 of Arnold's Letters. The Arnold 
of these letters is a man the essential integrity — whole- 
ness — of whose nature is incontestable. His sincerity, I 
kindliness, wide-ranging sympathy with all classes of 
men, are unmistakably expressed on every page of his 
correspondence. We see him having to do with 
people widely diverse in their relations to him ; with 
those close of kin, with chance friends, with many 
men of business or officials, with a wide circle of 
literary acquaintances, with workingmen, and with 
foreign savants. In all of his intercourse the same 
sweet-tempered frankness and the same readiness of 
sympathy are manifest. There is never a trace of the 
duplicity or the treacherous irony that are to be found 
in much of his prose. 

Moreover, the record that these Letters contain of 
close application to uncongenial tasks must have been 
a revelation to many readers who have had to rely 



I 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

upon books for their knowledge of literary men. 
Popular caricatures of Arnold had represented him as 
"a high priest of the kid-glove persuasion," as an 
incorrigible dilettante, as a kind of literary fop idling 
his time away over poetry and recommending the 
parmaceti of culture as the sovereignest thing in 
nature for the inward bruises of the spirit. This con- 
ception of Arnold, if it has at all maintained itself, 
certainly cannot survive the revelations of the Letters. 
The truth is beyond cavil that he \vas-cui£_of_^hemost 
sj elf-sacrificingly laborious men of his time. 

For a long period of years Arnold held the post of 
inspector of schools. Day after day, and week after 
week, he gave up one of the finest of minds, one of 
the most sensitive of temperaments, one of the most 
delicate of literary organizations, to the drudgery of 
examining in its minutest details the work of the 
schools in such elementary subjects as mathematics 
and grammar. On January 7, 1863, he writes to his 
mother, "I am now at the work I dislike most 
in the world — looking over and marking examina- 
tion papers. I was stopped last week by my eyes, 
and the last year or two these sixty papers a day of 
close hand-writing to read have, I am sorry to say, 
much tried my eyes for the time."* Two years later 
he laments again: ** I am being driven furious by 
seven hundred closely-written grammar papers, which 
I have to look over." ' During these years he was 
holding the Chair of Poetry at Oxford, and he had 
long since established his reputation as one of the 

' Letters, \. 207, ^ Letters, i, 285 



XI I IN TROD UC 770 N. 

foremost of the younger poets. Yet for a livelihood 
he was forced still to endure — and he endured them till 
within a few years of his death in 1888 — the exactions 
of this wearing and exasperating drudgery. More- 
over, despite occasional outbursts of impatience, he 
gave himself to the work freely, heartily, and effect- 
ively. He was sent on several occasions to the Con- 
tinent to examine and report on foreign school 
systems ; his reports on German and French educa- 
tion show immense diligence of investigation, a 
thorough grasp of detail, and patience and persistence 
in the acquisition of facts that in and for themselves 
must have been unattractive and unrewarding. 

The record of this severe labor is to be found in 
Arnold's Letters, and it must dispose once for all of 
any charge that he was a mere dilettante and coiner 
of phrases. Through a long period of years he 
was working diligently, wearisomely, in minutely prac- 
tical ways, to better the educational system of Eng- 
land ; he was persistently striving both to spread 
sounder ideals of elementary education and to make 
more effective the system actually in vogue. And 
thus, unpretentiously and laboriously, he was serv- 
ing the cause of sweetness and light as well as through 
his somewhat debonair contributions to literature. 

In another way his Letters have done much to 
reveal the innermost core of Arnold's nature, and so, 
ultimately, to explain the genesis of his prose. They 
place it beyond a doubt that in all he wrote Arnold 
had an underlying purpose, clearly apprehended and 
faithfully pursued. In 1867, in a letter to his mother, 
he says : " I more and more become conscious of 



INTRODUCTION. XllI 

having something to do and of a resolution to do 
it. . . Whether one lives long or not, to be less and 
less personal in one's desires and workings is the great 
matter." ^ In a letter of 1863 he had already written 
in much the same strain : " However, one cannot 
change English ideas as much as, if I live, I hope to 
change them, without saying imperturbably what one 
thinks, and making a good many people uncomfort- 
able." ^ And in a letter of the same year lie exclaims : 
*' It is very animating to think that one at last has a 
chance oi getting at the English public. Such a pub- 
lic as it is, and such a work as one wants to do with 
it." ^ A work to do ! The phrase recalls Cardinal 
Newman and the well-known anecdote of his Sicilian 
illness, when through all the days of greatest danger 
he insisted that he should get well because he had a 
work to do in England. Despite Arnold's difference 
in temperament from Newman and the widely dis- 
similar task he proposed to himself, he was no less in 
earnest than Newman, and no less convinced of the 
importance of his task. 

The occasional supercilious jauntiness of Arnold's 
style, then, need not trouble even the most consci- 
entious of his admirers. To many of his readers it is 
in itself, as has been already suggested, delightfully 
stimulating. Others, the more conscientious folk and 
perhaps also the severer judges of literary quality, are 
bound to find it artistically a blemish; but they need 
not at any rate regard it as implying any radical 
defect in Arnold's humanity or as the result of cheap 

^Letters, i. 400. "^Letters, i. 225. "Letters, i. 233. 



XIV INTRODUCTION. 

cynicism or of inadequate sympathy. In point of fact, 
the true account of the matter seems rather to lie in the 
paradox that the apparent superciliousness of Arnold's 
style comes from the very intensity of his moral 
earnestness, and that the limitations of his style and 
method are largely due to the strenuousness of his 
moral purpose. 

II. 

What, then, was Arnold's controlling purpose in 
his prose writing ? What was " the work " that he 
'* wanted to do with the English public " ? In trying 
to find answers to these questions it will be well first 
to have recourse to stray phrases in Arnold's prose ; 
these phrases will give incidental glimpses, from differ- 
ent points of view, of his central ideal ; later, their 
fragmentary suggestions may be brought together into 
something like a comprehensive formula. 

In the lectures on Celtic Literature Arnold points 
out in closing that it has been his aim to lead English- 
mento " reu nite themselv e s with their bette r mindjind 
with the world through sci ence " ; that he has sought 
to help theniJ^£on£uer the hard unintelligence, which 
was just then their bane : to supple and reduce it by 
culture, by a growth in the variety, fullness, and sweet- 
ness_ of thei r^ spiritual lif e," In the Preface to his first 
volume of Essays he explains that he is trying " to pull 
out a few more stops in that powerful but at present 
somewhat narrow-toned organ, the modern English- 
man." In Culture and Anarchy he assures us that 
his object is to convince men of the value of " culture "; 



IN TROD UCTION. XV 

to incite them to the pursuit of ''perfection"; to help 
"make reason and the will of God prevail." And 
again in the same work he declares that he is striving 
to intensify throughout England ''the impulse to the 
develojr ment of the whole man, to connecting an d 
ha£rruvirL7.in g all parts of him, perfecting a ll, leaving 
none to take their chance/ ^ 

These phrases give, often with capricious pictur- 
esqueness, hints of the prevailing intention with which 
Arnold writes. They may well be supplemented by 
a series of phrases in which, in similarly picturesque 
fashion, he finds fault with life as it actually exists in 
England, with the individual Englishman as he 
encounters him from day to day ; these phrases, 
through their critical implications, also reveal the pur- 
pose that is always present in Arnold's mind, when he 
addresses his countrymen. " Provinciality," Arnold 
points out as a widely prevalent and injurious charac- 
teristic of English literature ; it argues a lack of 
centrality, carelessness, jo.t-«ideal excellence, undue 
devoTion to relatively unimportant matters. Again, 
"arbitrariness," and "eccentricity" are noticeable 
traits both of English literature and scholarship ; 
Arnold finds them everywhere deforming Professor 
Newman's interpretations of Homer, and he further 
comments on them as in varying degrees " the great 
defect of English intellect — the great blemish of 
English literature." In religion he takes special 
exception to the " loss of totality" that results from 
sectarianism ; this is the penalty, Arnold contends, 
that the Nonconformist pays for his hostility to the 
established church ; in his pursuit of his own special 



XVI INTRODUCTION. 

enthusiasm the Nonconformist becomes, like Ephraim, 
*'a wild ass alone by himself." 

From all these brief quotations this much at least 
is plain, that what Arnold is continually recommend- 
ing is the complete development of the human type, 
and that what he is condemning is departure from 
some finely conceived ideal of human excellence — 
from some scheme of human nature in which all its 
powers have full and harmonious play. The various 
phrases that have been quoted, alike the positive and 
the negative ones, imply as Arnold's continual pur- 
pose in his prose-writings the recommendation of this 
ideal of human excellence and the illustration of the 
evils that result from its neglect. The significance 
and the scope of this purpose will become clearer, 
however, if we consider some of the imperfect ideals 
which Arnold finds operative in place of this absolute 
ideal, and note their misleading and depraving effects. 

One such partial ideal is the worship of the 
excessively practical and the relentlessly utilitarian 
as the only things in life worth while. England is 
a prevailingly practical nation, and our age is a 
prevailingly practical age ; the unregenerate product 
of this nation and age is the Philistine, and against 
the Philistine Arnold never wearies of inveighing. 
The Philistine is the swaggering enemy of the chil- 
dren of light, of the chosen people, of those who 
love art and ideas disinterestedly. The Philistine 
cares solely for business, for developing the material 
resources of the country, for starting companies, 
building bridges, making railways, and establishing 
plants. The machinery of life — its material organ- 



IN TROD UCTION. XVU 

ization — monopolizes all his attention. He judges 
of life by the outside, and is careless of the 
things of the spirit. The Philistine may, of course, 
be religious ; but his religion is as materialistic as his 
everyday existence ; his heaven is a triumph of engi- 
neering skill and his ideal of future bliss is, in Sydney 
Smith's phrase, to eat ^''pdtes de foie gras to the sound 
of trumpets." Against men of this class Arnold can- 
not show himself too cynically severe ; they are piti- 
ful distortions ; the practical instincts have usurped, 
and have destroyed, the symmetry and integrity of the 
human type. The senses and the will to live are mo- 
nopolizing and determine all the man's energy toward 
utilitarian ends. The power of beauty, the power of 
intellect and knowledge, the power of social manners 
are atrophied. Society is in serious danger unless 
men of this class can be touched with a sense of their 
shortcomings ; made aware of the larger values of 
life ; made pervious to ideas ; brought to recognize 
the importance of the things of the mind and the 
spirit. 

Another partial ideal, the prevalence of which Arnold 
laments, is the narrowly and unintelligently religious 
ideal. The middle class Englishman is according to 
Arnold a natural Hebraist; he is pre-occupied with 
matters of conduct and careless about things of the 
mind; he is negligent of beauty and abstract truth, of 
all those interests in life which had for the Greek of 
old, and still have for the modern man of " Hellen- 
istic " temper, such inalienable charm. The Puritan- 
ism of the seventeenth century was the almost 
unrestricted expression of the Hebraistic temper, and 



xviii INTRODUCTION. 

from the conceptions of life that were then wrought 
out, the middle classes in England have never wholly 
escaped. The Puritans looked out upon life with a 
narrow vision, recognized only a few of its varied in- 
terests, and provided for the needs of only a part of 
man's nature. Yet their theories and conceptions of 
life — theories and conceptions that were limited in the 
first place by the age in which they originated, and in 
the second place by a Hebraistic lack of sensitiveness 
to the manifold charm of beauty and knowledge — 
these limited theories and conceptions have imposed 
themselves constrainingly on many generations of 
Englishmen. To-day they remain, in all their nar- 
rowness and with an ever increasing disproportion to 
existing conditions, the most influential guiding prin- 
ciples of large masses of men. Such men spend their 
lives in a round of petty religious meetings and em- 
ployments. They think all truth is summed up in 
their little cut and dried Biblical interpretations. 
New truth is uninteresting or dangerous. Art dis- 
tracts from religion, and is a siren against whose 
seductive chanting the discreet religious Ulysses seals 
his ears. To Arnold this whole view of life seems 
sadly mistaken, and the men who hold it seem fan- 
tastic distortions of the authentic human type. The 
absurdities and the dangers of the unrestricted Hebra- 
istic ideal he satirizes or laments in Culture and 
Anarchy, in Literature and Dogma, in God and the 
Bible, and in St. Paul and Protestantism. 

Still another kind of deformity arises when the in- 
tellect grows self-assertive and develops overween- 
ingly. To this kind of distortion the modern man of 



IN TROD UC TIOiV. XIX 

science is specially prone ; his exclusive study of 
material facts leads to crude, unregenerate strength 
of intellect, and leaves him careless of the value truth 
may have for the spirit, and of its glimmering sugges- 
tions of beauty. Yes, and for the philosopher and the 
scholar, too, over-intellectualism has its peculiar dan- 
gers. The devotee of a system of thought is apt to 
lose touch with the real values of life, and in his exor- 
bitant desire for unity and thoroughness of organiza- 
tion, to miss the free play of vital forces that gives 
to life its manifold charm, its infinite variety, and 
its ultimate reality. Bentham and Comte are ex- 
amples of the evil effects of this rabid pursuit of 
system. '* Culture is always assigning to system- 
makers and systems a smaller share in the bent of 
human destiny than their friends like." ^ As for the 
pedant he is merely the miser of facts, who grows 
withered in hoarding the vain fragments of precious 
ore of whose use he has lost the sense. Men of all 
these various types offend Hirough their fanatical 
devotion to truth ; for, indeed, as someone has in 
recent years well said, the intellect is " but a parvenu^'* 
and the other powers of life, despite the Napoleonic 
irresistibleness of the newcomer, have rights that de- 
serve respect. Over-intellectualism, then, like the 
over-development of any other power, leads to dis- 
proportion and disorder. 

Such being some of the partial ideals against which 
Arnold warns his readers, what account does he give 
of that perfect human type in all its integrity, in terms 

' Culture and Anarchy, p. 33. 



XX IN TROD UCTIOiV. 

of which he criticises these aberrations or deformities ? 
To attempt an exact definition of this type would 
perhaps be a bit presumptuous and grotesque, and, 
with his usual sureness of taste, Arnold has avoided 
the experiment. But in many passages he has recorded 
clearly enough his notion of the powers in man that 
are essential to his humanity, and that must all be duly 
recognized and developed, if man is to attain in its 
full scope what nature offers him. A representative 
passage may be quoted from the lecture on Literature 
and Science : ''When we set ourselves to enumerate 
the powers which go to the building up of human life, 
and say that they are the power of conduct, the power 
of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, and 
the power of social life and manners, he [Professor 
Huxley] can hardly deny that this scheme, though 
drawn in rough and plain lines enough, and not pre- 
tending to scientific exactness, does yet give a fairly 
true representation of the matter. Human nature is 
built up of these powers ; we have the need for them 
all. When we have rightly met and adjusted the 
claims for them all, we shall then be in a fair way for 
getting soberness and righteousness with wisdom." ^ 

These same ideas are presented under a somewhat 
different aspect and with somewhat different termi- 
nology in the first chapter of Culture and Anarchy : 
" The great aim of culture [is] the aim of setting our- 
selves to ascertain what perfection is and to make it 
prevail." Culture seeks " the determination of this 
question through all the voices of human experience 

^ Selections, p. Ii6. 



INTRODUCTION. xXlU 

which have been heard upon it, — of art, science, poetry, 
philosophy, history, as well as of religion, — in order to 
give a greater fullness and certainty to its solution. . . 
Religion says: The Kingdom of God is wiilmi you ; 
and culture, in like manner, places human perfection 
in an internal condition, in the growth and predomi- 
nance of our humanity proper, as distinguished from 
our animality. It places it in the ever-increasing 
efficacy and in the general harmonious expansion of 
those gifts of thought and feeling which make the 
peculiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of human na- 
ture. As I have said on a former occasion : ' It is in 
making endless additions to itself, in the endless ex- 
pansion of its powers, in endless growth in wisdom 
and beauty, that the spirit of the human race finds its 
ideal. To reach this ideal, culture is an indispensable 
aid, and tliat is the true value of culture.' " * 

In such passages as these Arnold comes as near as 
he ever comes to defining the perfect human type. 
He does not profess to define it universally and in ab- 
stract terms, for indeed he ** hates " abstractions almost 
as inveterately as Burke hated them. He does not 
even describe concretely for men of his own time and 
nation the precise equipoise of powers essential to per- 
fection. Yet he names these powers, suggests the 
ends toward which they must by their joint working 
contribute, and illustrates through examples the evil 
effects of the preponderance or absence of one and 
another. Finally, in the course of his many discus- 
sions, he describes in detail the method by which the 

* Selections, p. 152. 



xxii INTRODUCTION. 

delicate adjustment of these rival powers may be 
secured in the typical man ; suggests who is to be the 
judge of the conflicting claims of these powers, 
and indicates the process by which this judge may 
most persuasively lay his opinions before those whom 
he wishes to influence. The method for the attain- 
ment of the perfect type is culture j the censor of 
defective types and the judge of the rival claims of 
the co-operant powers is the critic j and the process by 
which this judge clarifies his own ideas and enforces 
his opinions on others is criticism. 



III. 



We are now at the centre of Arnold's theory of life 
and hold the keyword to his system of belief, so far as 
he had a system. His reasons for attaching to the 
work of the critic the importance he palpably attached 
to it, are at once apparent. Criticism is the method 
by which the perfect type of human nature is at any 
moment to be apprehended and kept in uncontami- 
nate clearness of outline before the popular imagina- 
tion. The ideal critic is the man of nicest 
discernment in matters intellectual, moral, aesthetic, 
social ; of perfect equipoise of powers ; of delicately 
pervasive sympathy ; of imaginative insight; who grasps 
comprehensively the whole life of his time ; who feels 
its vital tendencies and is intimately aware of its most 
insistent preoccupations ; who also keeps his orienta- 
tion toward the unchanging norms of human endeavor : 
and who is thus able to note and set forth the imper- 



tNTkODUCTIOI^. XXlil 

fections in existing types of human nature and to urge 
persuasively a return in essential particulars to the 
normal type.- The function of criticism, then, is the 
vindication of the ideal human type against perverting 
'mffuerices, and Arnold's prose writings will for the 



most part be found to have been inspired in one form 
"oFanother by a single purpose : the correction of ex- 
cess in some human activity and the restoration of that 
activity to its proper place among the powers that make 
up the ideal human type. 

Culture a7id Anarchy (1869) was the first of Arnold's 
books to illustrate adequately this far-reaching concep- 
tion of criticism. His special topic is, in this case, 
social conditions in England. Politicians, he urges, 
whose profession it is to deal with social questions, are 
engrossed in practical matters and biassed by party 
considerations ; they lack the detachment and breadth 
of view to see the questions at issue in their true rela- 
tions to abstract standards of right and wrong. They 
mistake means for ends, machinery for the results that 
machinery is meant to secure ; they lose all sense of 
values and exalt temporary measures into matters 
of sacred import ; finally they come to that pass of 
ineptitude which Arnold symbolizes by the enthusiasm 
of Liberals over the measure to enable a man to marry 
his deceased wife's sister. What is needed to correct 
these absurd misapprehensions is the free play of criti- 
cal intelligence. The critic from his secure coign of 
vantage must examine social conditions dispassion- 
ately ; he must determine what is essentially wrong in 
the inner lives of the various classes of men around 
him and so reveal the real sources of those social evils 



XXIV IN TROD UCTION. 

which politicians are trying to remedy by external 
readjustments and temporary measures. 

And this is just the task that Arnold undertakes in 
Culture and Anarchy. He sets himself to consider 
Englisli society in its length and breadth with a view 
to discovering what is its essential constitution, what 
are the typical classes that enter into it, and what are 
the characteristics of these classes. So far as concerns 
classification, he ultimately accepts, it is true, as ade- 
quate to his purpose the traditional division of English 
society into upper, middle, and lower classes. But he 
then goes on to give an analysis of each of these 
classes that is novel, penetrating, in the highest degree 
stimulating. He takes a typical member of each class 
and describes him in detail, intellectually, morally, 
socially; he points out his sources of strength and his 
sources of weakness. He compares him as a type 
with the abstract ideal of human excellence and notes 
wherein his powers *' fall short or exceed." He indi- 
cates the reaction upon the social and political life of 
the nation of these various defects and excesses, 
their inevitable influence in producing social misad- 
justment and friction. Finally, he urges that the one 
remedy that will correct these errant social types and 
bring them nearer to the perfect human type is culture, 
increase in vital knowledge. 

The details of Arnold's application of this concep- 
tion of culture as a remedy for the social evils of the 
time, every reader may follow out for himself in 
Culture and Anarchy. One point in Arnold's concep- 
tion, however, is to be noted forthwith; it is a crucial 
point in its influence on his theorizings. By culture 



INTRODUCTIOiV. XXV 

Arnold means increase of knowledge; yes, but he 
means something more; culture is for Arnold not 
merely an intellectual matter. Culture is the best 
knowledge made operative and dynamic in life and 
character. Knowledge must be vitalized ; it must be 
intimately conscious of the whole range of human 
interests; it must ultimately subserve the whole 
nature of man. Continually, then, as Arnold is plead- 
ing for the spread of ideas, for increase of light, for 
the acceptance on the part of his fellow-countrymen 
of new knowledge from the most diverse sources, he 
is as keenly alive as anyone to the dangers of over- 
intellectualism. The undue development of the 
intellectual powers is as injurious to the individual as 
any other form of deviation from the perfect human 
type. 

This distrust of over-intellectualism is the ultimate 
p;round of Arnold's host ility to the claims ofJP hvsical 
"Science to primacy in modern education. His ideas 



on the relative educationaF'value" oFThe physical 
sciences and of the humanities are set forth in the 
well-known discourse on Literature and Science} 
Arnold is ready, no one is more ready, to accept the 
conclusions of science as to all topics that fall within 
its range; whatever its authenticated spokesmen have 
to say upon man's origin, his moral nature, his rela- 
tions to his fellows, his place in the physical universe, 
his religions, his sacred books — all these utterances are 
to be received with entire loyalty so far as they can 
be shown to embody the results of expert scientific 

' Selections, p. 104. 



XXVI IN TROD UC TION. 

observation and thought. But for Arnold the great 
importance of modern scientific truth does not for a 
moment make clear the superiority of the physical 
sciences over the Humanities as a means of educa- 
tional discipline. The study of the sciences tends 
merely to intellectual development, to the increase of 
mental power ; the study of literature on the other 
hand trains a man emotionally and morally, develops 
his human sympathies, sensitizes him temperamentally, 
rouses his imagination, and elicits his sense of beauty. 
Science puts before the student the crude facts of 
nature, bids him accept them dispassionately, rid 
himself of all discoloring moods as he watches the 
play of physical force, and convert himself into pure 
intelligence ; he is simply to observe, to analyze, to 
classify, and to systematize, and he is to go through 
these processes continually with facts that have no 
human quality, that come raw from the great whirl of 
the cosmic machine. As a discipline, then, for the 
ordinary man, the study of science tends not a whit 
toward humanization, toward refinement, toward 
temperamental regeneration ; it tends only to develop 
an accurate trick of the senses, fine observation, crude 
intellectual strength. These powers are of very great 
importance ; but they may also be trained in the 
study of literature, while at the same time the student, 
as Sir Philip Sidney long ago pointed out, is being led 
and drawn " to as high a perfection as our degenerate 
souls, made worse by their clay lodgings, can be 
capable of." Arnold, then, with characteristic anxiety 
for the integrity of the human type, urges the superior 
worth to most young men of a literary rather than a 



/.V TROD UC no AT. xxvil 

scientific training. Literature nourishes the whole 
spirit of man ; science ministers only to the intellect. 

The same insistent desire that culture be vital is at 
the root of Arnold's discomfort in the presence of 
German scholarship. For the thoroughness and the 
disinterestedness of this scholarship he has great re- 
spect; but he cannot endure its trick of losing itself in 
the letter, its *' pedantry, slowness," its way of '' fum- 
bling" after truth, its 'ineffectiveness."^ "In the 
German mind," he exclaims in Literature and Dogma^ 
" as in the German language, there does seem to be 
something splay, something blunt-edged, unhandy, 
infelicitous, — some positive want of straightforward, 
sure perception." ^ Of scholarship of this splay variety, 
that comes from exaggerated intellectuality and from 
lack of a delicate temperament and of nice perceptions, 
Arnold is intolerant. Such scholarship he finds work- 
ing its customary mischief in Professor Francis New- 
man's translation of Homer, and, accordingly, he gives 
large parts of the lectures on Translating Homer to the 
illustration of its shortcomings and maladroitness ; he 
is bent on showing how inadequate is great learning 
alone to cope with any nice literary problem. New- 
man's philological knowledge of Greek and of Homer 
is beyond dispute, but his taste may be judged from his 
assertion that Homer's verse, if we could hear the liv- 
ing Homer, would affect us '' like an elegant and 
simple melody from an African of the Gold Coast." ^ 
The remedy for such inept scholarship lies in cul- 

' Celtic Literature, p. 75. '^ Literature and Dogma, p. xxi, 
'^ On Translating Homer, p. 295 , 



XXV 111 INTRODUCTION. 

ture, in the vitalization of knowledge. The scholar 
must not be a mere knower ; all his powers must be 
harmoniously developed. 

One last illustration of Arnold's insistence that 
knowledge be vital, may be drawn from his writings 
on religion and theology. Again criticism and cul- 
ture are the passwords that open the way to a 
new and better order of things. Formulas, Arnold 
urges, have fastened themselves constrainingly upon 
the English religious mind. Traditional interpreta- 
tions of the Bible have come to be received as be- 
yond cavil. These interpretations are really human 
inventions — the product of the ingenious think- 
ing of theologians like Calvin and Luther. Yet 
they have so authenticated themselves that for 
most readers to-day the Bible means solely what 
it meant for the exacerbated theological mind of the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If religion is 
to be vital, if knowledge of the Bible is to be genuine 
and real, there must be a critical examination of what 
this book means for the disinterested intelligence of 
to-day; the Bible, as literature, must be interpreted 
anew, sympathetically and imaginatively; the moral 
inspiration the Bible has to offer, even to men who 
are rigidly insistent on scientific habits of thought and 
standards of historical truth, must be disengaged 
from what is unverifiable and transitory, and made 
real and persuasive. '' I write," Arnold declares, " to 
convince the lover of religion that by following habits 
of intellectual seriousness he need not, so far as re- 
ligion is concerned, lose anything. Taking the Old 
Testament as Israel's magnificent establishrnent of 



INTRODUCTION. XXIX 

the theme, Righteousness is salvation ! taking the New 
as the perfect ehicidation by Jesus of what righteous- 
ness is and how salvation is won, I do not fear com- 
paring even the power over the soul and imagination 
of the Bible, taken in this sense, — a sense which is at 
the same time solid, — with the like power in the old 
materialistic and miraculous sense for the Bible, 
which is not." ^ This definition of what Arnold hopes 
to do for the Bible may be supplemented by a descrip- 
tion of the method in which culture works toward the 
ends desired : " Difficult, certainly, is the right read- 
ing of the Bible, and true culture, too, is difficult. 
For true culture implies not only knowledge, but right 
tact and justness of judgment, forming themselves 
by and with knowledge; without this tact it is not true 
culture. Difficult, however, as culture is, it is neces- 
sary. For, after all, the Bible is not a talisman, to 
be taken and used literally; neither is any existing 
Church a talisman, whatever pretensions of the sort 
it may make, for giving the right interpretation of the 
Bible. Only true culture can give us this interpreta- 
tion ; so that if conduct is, as it is, inextricably 
bound up with the Bible and the right interpretation 
of it, then the importance of culture becomes un- 
speakable. For if conduct is necessary (and there is 
nothing so necessary), culture is necessary." ^ 

Enough has now been said to illustrate Arnold's 
conception of culture and of its value as a specific 
against all the ills that society is heir to. Culture 

' God and the Bible, p. xxxiv. 
^ Literature and Dogma, p. xxvii, 



XXX INTRODUCTION. 

is vital knowledge and the critic is its fosterer 
and guardian ; culture and criticism work together 
for the preservation of the integrity of the human 
type against all the disasters that threaten it from 
the storm and stress of modern life. Politics, 
religion, scholarship, science each has its special 
danger for the individual; each seizes upon him, 
subdues him relentlessly to the need of the moment 
and the requirements of some particular function, and 
converts him often into a mere distorted fragment 
of humanity. Against this tyranny of the moment, 
against the specializing and materializing trend of 
modern life, criticism offers a powerful safeguard. 
Criticism is ever concerned with archetypal excel- 
lence, is continually disengaging with fine discrimina- 
tion what is transitory and accidental from what is 
permanent and essential in all that man busies himself 
about, and is thus perpetually helping every individual 
to the apprehension of his "best self," to the develop- 
ment of what is real and absolute and the elimination 
of what is false or deforming. And in doing all this 
the critic acts as the appreciator of life; he is not the 
abstract thinker. He apprehends the ideal intuitively; 
he reaches it by the help of the feelings and the 
imagination and a species of exquisite tact, not 
through a series of syllogisms; he is really a poet, 
rather than a philosopher. 

This conception of the nature and functions of 
criticism makes intelligible and justifies a phrase of 
Arnold's that has often been impugned — his descrip- 
tion of poetry as a criticism of life. To this account 
of poetry it has been objected that criticism is an intel- 



IN TROD UC TION. xxxi 

tectual process, while poetry is primarily an affair of 
the imagination and the heart; and that to regard 
poetry as a criticism of life is to take a view of poetry 
that tends to convert it into mere rhetorical moraliz- 
ing; the decorative expression in rhythmical language 
of abstract truth about life. This misinterpretation 
of Arnold's meaning becomes impossible, if the fore- 
going theory of criticism be borne in mind. Criticism 
is the determination and the representation of the 
archetypal, of the ideal. Moreover, it is not a deter- 
mination of the archetypal formally and theoretically, 
through speculation or the enumeration of abstract 
qualities ; Arnold's disinclination for abstractions has 
been repeatedly noted. The process to be used in 
criticism is a vital process of appreciation, in which I 
the critic, sensitive to the whole value of human life, f 
to the appeal of art and of conduct and of manners as 
well as of abstract truth, feels his way to a synthetic 
grasp upon what is ideally best and portrays this con- 1 
cretely and persuasively for the popular imagination. 
Such an appreciator of life, if he produce beauty in 
verse, if he embody his vision of the ideal in metre, 
will be a poet. In other words, the poet is the 
appreciator of human life who sees in it most sen- 
sitively, inclusively, and penetratingly what is arche- 
typal and evokes his vision before others through 
rhythm and rhyme. In this sense poetry can hardly 
be denied to be a criticism of life ; it is the winning 
portrayal of the ideal of human life as this ideal shapes 
itself in the mind of the poet. Such a criticism of 
life Dante gives, a determination and portrayal of 
what is ideally best in life according to mediaeval 



xxxii INTRODUCTION. 



i 



conceptions ; a representation of life in its integrity 
with a due adjustment of the claims of all the powers 
that enter into it — friendship, ambition, patriotism, 
loyalty, religion, artistic ardor, love. Such a criticism 
of life Shakspere incidentally gives in terms of the full 
scope of Elizabethan experience in England ; with 
due imaginative setting forth of the splendid vistas of 
possible achievement and unlimited development that 
the new knowledge and the discoveries of the Renais- 
sance had opened. In short, the great poet is the 
typically sensitive, penetrative, and suggestive appre- 
ciator of life, — who calls to his aid, to make his appreci- 
ation as resonant and persuasive as possible, as potent 
as possible over men's minds and hearts, all the 
emotional and imaginative resources of language, — 
rhythm, figures, allegory, symbolism — whatever will 
enable him to impose his appreciation of life upon 
others and to insinuate into their souls his sense of the 
relative values of human acts and characters and 
passions ; whatever will help him to make more over- 
weeningly beautiful and insistently eloquent his 
vision of beauty and truth. In this sense the poet is 
the limiting ideal of the appreciative critic, and poetry 
is the ultimate criticism of life — the finest portrayal 
each age can attain to of what seems to it in life most 
significant and delightful. 

IV. 

The purpose with which Arnold writes is now 
fairly apparent. His aim is to shape in happy 
fashion the lives of his fellows ; to free them 



t 



INTRODUCTION. XXXlll 

from the bonds that the struggle for existence imposes 
upon them; to enlarge their horizons, to enrich them 
spiritually, and to call all that is best within them into 
as vivid play as possible. When we turn to Arnold's 
literary criticism we shalt find this purpose no less 
paramount. 

A glance through the volumes of Arnold's essays 
renders it clear that his selection of a poet or a prose- 
writer for discussion was usually made with a view to 
putting before English readers some desirable trait of 
character for their imitation, some temperamental ex- 
cellence that they are lacking in, some mode of belief 
that they neglect, some habit of thought that they 
need to cultivate. Joubert is studied and portrayed 
because of his single-hearted love of light, the purity 
of his disinterested devotion to truth, the fine distinc- 
tion of his thought, and the freedom of his spirit from 
the sordid stains of worldly life. Heine is a typical 
leader in the war of emancipation, the arch-enemy of 
Philistinism, and the light-hearted indomitable foe of 
prejudice and cant. Maurice and Eugenie de Guerin 
are winning examples of the spiritual distinction that 
modern Romanism can induce in timely-happy souls. 
Scherer, whose critiques upon Milton and Goethe are 
painstakingly reproduced in the Mixed Essays, repre- 
sents French critical intelligence in its best play — 
acute, yet comprehensive; exacting, yet sympathetic; 
regardful of nuances and delicately refining, and yet 
virile and constructive. Of the importance for mod- 
ern England of emphasis on all these qualities of 
mind and heart, Arnold was securely convinced. 
Moreover, even when his choice of subject is deter- 



xxxiv INTRODUCTION. 

mined by other than moral considerations, his treat- 
ment is apt, none the less, to reveal his ethical bias. 
Again and again in his essays on poetry, for example, 
it is the substance of poetry that he is chiefly anxious 
to handle, while the form is left with incidental analy- 
sis. Wordsworth is the poet of joy in widest common- 
alty spread-^the p'o^et~wlTos^e~criti'asiirof~ttf"e~is^iiiost 
sound and enduring and salutary. Shelley is a febrile 
creature, insecure in his sense of worldly values, " a 
beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his 
luminous wings in vain." ^ The essay on Heine helps 
us only mediately to an appreciation of the volatile 
beauty of Heine's songs, or to an intenser delight in the 
mere surface play of hues and moods in his verse. 
From the essay on George Sand, to be sure, we receive 
many vivid impressions of the emotional and imagina- 
tive scope of French romance ; for this essay was 
written con amore in the revivification of an early mood 
of devotion, and in an unusually heightened style ; 
the essay on Emerson is the one study that has in 
places somewhat of the same lyrical intensity and the 
same vividness of realization. Yet even in the essay 
on George Sand, the essayist is on the whole bent on 
revealing the temperament of the woman rather in its 
decisive influence on her theories of life than in its 
reaction upon her art as art. There is hardly a word 
of the Romance as a definite literary form, of George 

' This famous image was probably suggested by a sentence of 
Joubert's : "Plato loses himself in the void, but one sees the 
play of his wings, one hears their rustle. . . It is good to 
breathe his air, but not to live upon him." The translation is 
Arnold's own. See his Joubert, in Essays in Criticism^ i. 294. 



IN TROD UCTION. XxxV 

Sand's relation to earlier French writers of fiction, or 
of her distinctive methods of work as a portrayer of 
the great human spectacle. In short, literature as 
art, literary forms as definite modes of artistic expres- 
sion, the technique of the literary craftsman receive 
for the most part from Arnold slight attention. 

Perhaps, the one piece of work in which Arnold set 
himself with some thoroughness to the discussion of 
a purely literary problem was his series of lectures 
on Translating Hojner. These lectures were pro- 
duced before his sense of responsilility for the 
moral regeneration of the Philistine had become im- 
portunate, and were addressed to an academic audi- 
ence. For these reasons, the treatment of literary 
topics is more disinterested and less interrupted by 
practical considerations. Indeed, as will be presently 
noted in illustration of another aspect of Arnold's 
work, these lectures contain very subtle and delicate 
appreciations, show everywhere exquisite responsive- 
ness to changing effects of style, and enrich gratefully 
the vocabulary of impressionistic criticism. 

Even in these exceptional lectures, however, Arnold's 
ethical interest asserts itself. In the course of them 
he gives an account of the grand style in poetry, — of 
that poetic manner that seems to him to stand highest 
in the scale of excellence; and he carefully notes as 
an essential of this manner, — of this grand style, — its 
moral power ; " it can form the character, ... is 
edifying, . . . can refine the raw natural man . . . 
can transmute him." ^ This definition of the grand 

'6>« Translating Homer, ed. 1883, p. 197. 



xxxvi INTRODUCTION-. 

style will be discussed presently in connection with 
Arnold's general theory of poetry ; it is enough to 
note here that it illustrates the inseparableness in 
Arnold's mind between art and morals. 

His description of poetry as a criticism of life has 
already been mentioned. This doctrine is early im- 
plied in Arnold's writings, for example, in the passage 
just quoted from the lectures on Translating Homer; 
it becomes more explicit in the Last Words ap- 
pended to these lectures, where the critic asserts 
that "the noble and profound application of ideas to 
life is the most essential part of poetic greatness." ' 
It is elaborated in the essays on Wordswoi'ih (1879), 
on the Study of Poetry (1880), and on Byron (1881). 
" It is important, therefore," the essay on Words- 
worth assures us, " to hold fast to this: that poetry is 
at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a 
poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of 
ideas to life, — to the question: How to live." ^ And 
in the essay on the Study of Poetry Arnold urges that 
" in poetry, as a criticism of life under the conditions 
fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth 
and poetic beauty, the spirit of our race will find . . . 
as time goes on and as other helps fail, its consolation 
and stay." ^ 

With this doctrine of the indissoluble connection 
between the highest poetic excellence and essen- 
tial nobleness of subject-matter probably only the 
most irreconcilable advocates of art for art's sake 

^ Oh Translating Homer, ed. 1883, p. 295. 
^Essays, ii.,ed. i8gi, p. 143. 
^Essays, ii., ed. 1S91, p. 5. 



INTRODUCTION, XXXvii 

would quarrel. So loyal an adherent of art as Walter 
Pater suggests a test of poetic " greatness " substan- 
tially the same with Arnold's. " It is on the quality 
of the matter it informs or controls, its compass, its 
variety, its alliance to great ends, or the depth of the 
note of revolt, or the largeness of hope in it, that the 
greatness of literary art depends, as The Divine Co?nedy, 
Paradise Lost, Les Mise'rables, Tlie English Bible, are 
great art." ^ This may be taken as merely a different 
phrasing of Arnold's principle that "the greatness of 
a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of 
ideas to life — to the question : How to live." Surely, 
then, we are not at liberty to press any objection to 
Arnold's general theory of poetry on the ground of its 
being over-ethical. 

There remains nevertheless the question of emphasis. 
In the application to special cases of this test of essen- 
tial worth either the critic may be constitutionally 
biassed in favor of a somewhat restricted range of defi- 
nite ideas about life, or even when he is fairly hos- 
pitable toward various moral idioms, he may still be so 
intent upon making ethical distinctions as to fail to 
give their due to the purely artistic qualities of poetry. 
It is in this latter way that Arnold is most apt to 
offend. The emphasis in the discussions of Words- 
worth, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Gray, and Milton is 
prevailingly on the ethical characteristics of each 
poet; and the reader carries away from an essay a 
vital conception of the play of moral energy and of 
spiritual passion in the poet's verse rather than an im- 

'^V2X^x\ Appreciations, ed. 1S90, p. 36. 



xxxviii INTRODUCTION. 

pression of his peculiar adumbration of beauty, the 
characteristic rhythms of his imaginative movement, 
the delicate color modulations on the surface of his 
image of life. 

It must, however, be borne in mind that Arnold has 
specially admitted the incompleteness of his descrip- 
tion of poetry as " a criticism of life "; this criticism, 
he has expressly added, must be made in conformity 
'' to the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty." 
" The profound criticism of life " characteristic of 
" the few supreme masters " must exhibit itself " in 
indissoluble connection with the laws of poetic truth 
and beauty." ^ Is there, then, any account to be found 
in Arnold of these laws observance of which secures 
poetic beauty and truth? Is there any description of 
the special ways in which poetic beauty and truth 
manifest themselves, of the formal characteristics to be 
found in poetry where poetic beauty and truth are 
present ? Does Arnold either suggest the methods the 
poet must follow to attain these qualities or classify 
the various subordinate effects through which poetic 
beauty and truth invariably reveal their presence? 
The most apposite parts of his writings to search for 
some declaration on these points are the lectures on 
Translating Ho7ne}\ and the second series of his essays 
which deal chiefly with the study of poetry. Here, if 
anywhere, we ought to find a registration of beliefs as 
regards the precise nature and source of poetic beauty 
and truth. 

And indeed throughout all these writings, which run 

"^Essays, ii., ed, 1891, pp. 186-187, 



INTRODUCTION. Xxxix 

through a considerable period of time, Arnold makes 
fairly consistent use of a half dozen categories for his 
analyses of poetic effects. These categories are sub- 
stance and matter, style and manner, diction and 
movement. Of the substance of really great poetry we 
learn repeatedly that it must be made up of ideas of 
profound significance " on man, on nature, and on 
human life." ^ This is, however, merely the prescript 
tion already so often noted that poetry, to reach the 
highest excellence, must contain a penetrating and 
ennobling criticism of life. In the essay on Byroft, 
however, there is something formally added to this 
requisition of "truth and seriousness of substance and 
matter " ; besides these, " felicity and perfection of 
diction and manner, as these are exhibited in the best 
poets, are what constitute a criticism of life made in 
conformity with the laws of poetic truth and poetic 
beauty." "^ There must then be felicity and perfection 
of diction and manner in poetry of the highest order ; 
these terms are somewhat vague, but serve at least to 
guide us on our analytic way. In the essay on the 
Study of Poetry^ there is still further progress made in 
the description of poetic excellence. " To the style 
and manner of the best poetry, their special character, 
their accent is given by their diction, and, even yet 
more, by their movement. And though we distinguish 
between the two characters, the two accents, of supe- 
riority," [/. e., between the superiority that comes from 
substance and the superiority that comes from style], 



^Essays, ii., ed. 1891, p. 141. 
'^Essays, ii., ed. i8gi, p. 187. 



xl IN TR OD UC TION. 

'' yet they are nevertheless vitally connected one with 
the other. The superior character of truth and ser- | 
iousness, in the matter and substance of the best poetry, 
is inseparable from the superiority of diction and 
movement marking its style and manner. The two 
superiorities are closely related, and are in steadfast ! 
proportion one to the other. So far as high poetic ' 
truth and seriousness are wanting to a poet's matter 
and substance, so far also, we may be sure, will a high 
poetic stamp of diction and movement be wanting to 
his style and manner." ^ 

Now that there is this intimate and necessary union 
between a poet's mode of conceiving life and his man- 
ner of poetic expression, is hardly disputable. The 
image of life in a poet's mind is simply the outside 
world transformed by the complex of sensations and 
thoughts and emotions peculiar to the poet ; and this 
image inevitably frames for itself a visible and audible 
expression that delicately utters its individual char- 
acter — distills that character subtly through word 
and sentence, rhythm and metaphor, image and 
figure of speech, and through their integration into a 
vital work of art. Moreover, the poet's style is itself 
in general the product of the same personality which 
determines his image of life, and must therefore be 
like his image of life delicately striated with the mark- 
ings of his play of thought and feeling and fancy. 
The close correspondence, then, between the poet's 
subject-matter and his manner or style is indubitable. 
The part of Arnold's conclusion or the point in his 

^Essays, ii., ed. iSgr, p. 22. 



INTRODUCTION. xli 

method that is regrettable is the exclusive stress that 
he throws on this dependence of style upon worth of 
substance. He converts style into a mere function 
of the moral quality of a poet's thought about life, and 
fails to furnish any delicately studied categories for 
the appreciation of poetic style apart from its moral 
implications. 

Take, for example, the judgments passed in the 
Study of Poetry upon various poets ; in every instance 
the estimate of the poet's style turns upon the quality 
of his thought about life. Is it Chaucer whose right 
to be ranked as a classic is mooted ? He cannot be 
ranked as a classic because " the substance of " his 
poetry has not "high seriousness."^ Is it Burns 
whose relative rank is being fixed? Burns through 
lack of "absolute sincerity" falls short of "high 
seriousness," and hence is not to be placed among the 
classics. And thus continually with Arnold, effects of 
style are merged in moral qualities, and the reader 
gains little insight into the refinements of poetical 
manner except as these derive directly from the poet's 
moral consciousness. The categories of style and 
manner, diction and movement, are everywhere subor- 
dinated to the categories of substance and matter, are 
treated as almost wholely derivative. " Felicity and 
perfection of diction and manner," wherever they are 
admittedly present, are usually explained as the direct 
result of the poet's lofty conception of life. Such a 
treatment of questions of style does not further us 
much on our way to a knowledge of the "laws of 
poetic beauty and poetic truth." 

^Essays, ii., ed. 1S91, p. 33. 



xlii INTRODVCTION. 

Doubtless somewhat more disinterested analyses of 
style may be found in the lectures on Translating 
Ho77ier. These discussions do not establish laws, but 
they at least consider poetic excellence as for the 
moment dependent on something else than the moral 
mood of the poet. For example, the grand style is 
analyzed into two varieties, the grand style in severity 
and the grand style in simplicity. Each of these 
styles is described and illustrated so that it enters into 
the reader's imagination and increases his sensitive- 
ness to poetic excellence.' Again, a bit later in the 
lectures, the distinction between real simplicity and 
sophisticated simplicity in poetic style is drawn with 
exquisite delicacy of appreciation.^ Here there is 
an effort to deal directly with artistic effects for 
their own sake and apart from their significance 
as expressive of ethos. Yet, even in these cases, the 
effort to be faithful to the artistic point of view is 
only partly successful. For example, the essential 
beauty of the grand style in severity is referred to our 
consciousness of " the great personality . . . the 
noble nature, in the poet its author";^ and the sim- 
plesse of Tennyson's style is explained at least psycho- 
logically, if not morally, as resulting from the subtle 
sophistication of his thought.* 

To bring together, then, the results of this some- 
what protracted analysis : Arnold ostensibly admits 
that poetry, to be of the highest excellence, must, in 

' On Translating Homer, ed. 1883, pp. 265-267. 
'^Ibid., p. 288. 
^ Ibid., p. 268. 
'^Ibid., p. 288. 



IN TROD UC TIO.V. xilll 

addition to containing a criticism of life of profound 
significance, conform to the laws of poetic beauty and 
truth. He accepts as necessary categories for the 
appreciation of poetical excellence style and manner, 
diction and movement. Yet his most important gen- 
eral assertion about these latter purely formal deter- 
minations of poetry is that they are inseparably 
connected with substance and matter; similarly, when- 
ever he discusses artistic effects, he is apt to find them 
interesting simply as serving to interpret the artist's 
prevailing mood toward life; and even where, as is at 
times doubtless the case, he escapes for the moment 
from his ethical interest and appreciates with imagina- 
tive delicacy the individual quality of a poem or a 
poet's style, he is nearly always found sooner or later 
explaining this quality as originating in the poet's 
peculiar ethos. As for any systematic or even inci- 
dental determination of " the laws of poetic beauty 
and truth," we search for it through his pages in vain. 



But it would be wrong to attribute this lack in 
Arnold's essays of theorizing about questions of art 
solely to his preoccupation with conduct. For theory 
in general and for abstractions in general, — for all 
sorts of philosophizing, — Arnold openly professes his 
dislike. " Perhaps we shall one day learn," he says \n 
his essay on Wordsworth, '' to make this proposition 
general, and to say: Poetry is the reality, philosophy 
the illusion." ^ This ^istrus^j^ f the abstract and the 

^Essays, ii., ed. 1S91, p. 149. 



J 



xl i V IN TR OD UC 7 'ION. 

purely theoreti cal_ shows itself throughout his literar y 
c riticism and determines m an y of its rhararteristics. 

His hostility to systems and to system-makers has 
already been pointed out ; this hostility admits of no 
exception in favor of the systematic critic. *' There is 
the judgment of ignorance, the judgment of incom- 
patibility, the judgment of envy and jealousy. Fi- 
nally, there is the systematic judgment, and this judg- 
ment is the most worthless of all. . . Its author has 
not really his eye upon the professed object of his 
criticism at all, but upon something else which he 
wants to prove by means of that object. He neither 
really tells us, therefore, anything about the object, 
nor anything about his own ignorance of the object. 
He never fairly looks at it; he is looking at something 
else." ' This hypnotizing effect is what Arnold first 
objects to and fears in a theory; the critic with a 
theory is bound to find what he goes in search of, and 
nothing else. He goes out — to change somewhat 
one of Arnold's own figures — like Saul, the son of 
Kish, in search of his father's asses; and he comes 
back with the authentic animals instead of the tradi- 
tional windfall of a kingdom. 

Nor is preoccupation with a pet theory the sole in- 
capacity^ J^2^j_^T21!2]J-^I! i^'^ ^" ^^^ systfm^^l^^if' rn'tir; 
such a critic is almost sure to be over Mjr telle ctu alized ,_ 
a victim of abstractions and definitions, dependent for 
his judgments on conceptions, and lacking in temper- 
amental sensitiveness to the appeal of literature as 
art. He is merely a triangulator of the landscape of 

^ Mixed Essays, ed, 1883, p. 209. 



INTRODUCTION. xlv 

literature, and moves resolutely in his process of tri- 
angulation from one fixed point to another; he finds 
significant only such parts of his experience as he can 
sum up in a definite abstract formula at some one of 
these arbitrary halting places; his ultimate opinion of 
the ground he covers is merely the sum total of a com- 
paratively small number of such abstract expressions. 
To the manifold wealth of the landscape in color, in 
light, in shade, and in poetic suggestiveness, the sys- 
tem-monger, the theoretical critic, has all the time 
been blind. 

Knowledge, too, even though it be not severely sys- 
tematized, may interfere with the free play of critical 
intelligence. An oversupply of unvitalized facts or 
ideas, even though these facts or ideas be not organ- 
ized into an importunate theory, may prove disastrous 
to the critic. The danger to which the critic is 
exposed from this source, Arnold has amusingly set 
forth in his Last Words on Homeric translation : 
" Much as Mr. Newman was mistaken when he talked 
of my rancour, he is entirely right when he talks of my 
ignorance. And yet, perverse as it seems to say so, 
I sometimes find myself wishing, when dealing with 
these matters of poetical criticism, that my ignor- 
ance were even greater than it is. To handle these 
matters properly, there is needed a poise so perfect 
that the least overweight in any direction tends to 
destroy the balance. Temper destroys it, a crotchet 
destroys it, even erudition may destroy it. To press 
to the sense of the thing with which one is dealing, 
not to go off on some collateral issue about the thing, 
is the hardest matter in the world. The 'thing 



xlvi INTRODUCTION. 

itself ' with which one is here dealing — the critical 
perception of poetic truth — is of all things the most 
volatile, elusive, and evanescent; by even pressing too 
impetuously after it, one runs the risk of losing it. 
The critic of poetry should have the finest tact, the 
nicest moderation, the most free, flexible, and elastic 
spirit imaginable; he should be, indeed, the 'ondoyant 
et divers,' the undulating and diverse being of Mon- 
taigne. The less he can deal with his object simply 
and freely, the more things he has to take into ac- 
count in dealing with it, — the more, in short, he has 
to encumber himself, — so much the greater force of 
spirit he needs to retain his elasticity. But one can- 
not exactly have this greater force by wishing for it; 
so, for the force of spirit one has, the load put upon it 
is often heavier than it will well bear. The late 
Duke of Wellington said of a certain peer that ' it 
was a great pity his education had been so far too 
much for his abilities.' In like manner one often sees 
erudition out of all proportion to its owner's critical 
faculty. Little as I know, therefore, I am always ap- 
prehensive, in dealing with poetry, lest even that little 
should prove too much for my abilities." ^ 

Discreet ignorance, then, is Arnold's counsel of 
perfection to the would-be critic. And, accordingly, 
he himself is desultory from conscientious motives and 
unsystematic by fixed rule. There are two passages 
in his writings where he explains confidentially his 
methods and his reasons for choosing them. The 
first occurs in a letter of 1864 : "My sinuous, easy, 

^On Translating Homer, p, 245. 



IN TROD UC TION. xl vii 

unpolemical mode of proceeding has been adopted 
by me first because I really think it the best way 
of proceeding, if one wants to get at, and keep 
with, truth; secondly, because I am convinced only 
by a literary form of this kind being given to them 
can ideas such as mine ever gain any access in a 
country such as ours." * The second passage occurs 
in the Preface to his first series of Essays in Criticism 
(1865): " Indeed, it is not in my nature — some of my 
critics would rather say not in my power — to dispute 
on behalf of any opinion, even my own, very obsti- 
nately. To try and approach truth on one side after 
another, not to strive or cry, not to persist in pressing 
forward, on any one side, with violence and self-will, 
it is only thus, it seems to me, that mortals may hope 
to gain any vision of the mysterious Goddess, whom 
we shall never see except in outline. He who will do 
nothing but fight impetuously toward her, on his own 
one favorite particular line, is inevitably destined to 
run his head into the folds of the black robe in which 
she is wrapped." ^ 

Such, then, is Arnold's ideal of critical method. The 
critic is not to move from logical point to point, as, for 
example, Francis Jeffrey was wont, in his essays, to 
move, with an advocate's devotion to system and de- 
sire to make good some definite conclusion. Rather 
the critic is to give rein to his temperament ; 
he is to make use of intuitions, imaginations, hints 
that touch the heart, as well as abstract principles, 
syllogisms, and arguments ; and so he is to reach out 

'^Letters, i. 282. ^-Essays, i., ed. 1891, p. v. 



xlviii INTRODUCTION. 

tentatively through all his powers after truth if haply 
he may find her ; in the hope that thus, keeping close 
to the concrete aspects of his subject, he may win to 
an ever more inclusive and intimate command of its 
surface and* configurations. The type of mind most 
apt for this kind of critical work is the " free, flexible 
and elastic spirit," described in the passage from the 
Last Words quoted a moment ago ; the " undulating 
and diverse being of Montaigne." 

A critic of this type will palpably concern himself 
slightly with abstractions, with theorizings, with 
definitions. And indeed Arnold's unwillingness to 
define becomes at times almost ludicrous. ^' Noth- 
ing has raised more questioning among my critics 
than these words — noble, the grand style. . . Alas ! 
the grand style is the last matter in the world for 
verbal definition to deal with adequately. One may 
say of it as is said of faith : ' One must feel it in 
order to know it.' "^ Similarly in the Study of Poetry, 
Arnold urges : '' Critics give themselves great labour 
to draw out what in the abstract constitutes the 
characters of a high quality of poetry. It is much 
better to have recourse to concrete examples. . . 
If we are asked to define this mark and accent in the 
abstract, our answer must be : No, for we should 
thereby be darkening the question, not clearing it." 
Again : "I may discuss what in the abstract consti- 
tutes the grand style; but that sort of general dis- 
cussion never much helps our judgment of particular 
instances."^ 

^ On Translating Homer, ed. 1883, p. 264. 
"^ /bid,, p. 194. 



INTRODUCTION. xlix 

These passages are characteristic; rarely indeed 
does Arnold consent to commit himself to the control 
of a definition. He prefers to convey into his readers' 
mind a living realization of the thing or the object 
he treats of rather than to put before them its logically 
articulated outlines. 

Moreover, when he undertakes the abstract dis- 
cussion of a general term, he is apt to be capricious 
in his treatment of it and to follow in his subdivisions 
and classifications some external clew rather than 
logical structure. In the essay on Celtic Literature 
he discusses the various ways of handling nature in 
poetry and finds four such ways — the conventional 
way, the faithful way, the Greek way, and the magical 
way. The'classification recommends itself through its 
superficial charm and facility, yet rests on no psycho- 
logical truth, or at any rate carries with it, as Arnold 
treats it, no psychological suggestions ; it gives no 
swift insight into the origin in the poet's mind and 
heart of these different modes of conceiving of nature. 
Hence, the classification, as Arnold uses it, is merely a 
temporary makeshift for rather gracefully grouping 
effects, not an analytic interpretation of these effects 
through a reduction of them to their varying sources 
in thought and feeling. 

This may be taken as typical of Arnold's critical 
methods. As we read his essays we have no sense of 
making definite progress in the comprehension of lit- 
erature as an art among arts, as well as in the apprecia- 
tion of an individual author or poem. We are not 
being intellectually oriented as we are in reading the 
most stimulating critical work; we are not getting an 



1 IN TROD UC TION, 

ever surer sense of the points of the compass. Essays, 
to have this orienting power, need not be continually 
prating of theories and laws; they need not be 
rabidly scientific in phrase or in method. But they 
must issue from a mind that has come to an under- 
standing with itself about the genesis of art in the 
genius of the artist; about the laws that, when the 
utmost plea has been made for freedom and caprice, 
regulate artistic production ; about the history and 
evolution of art forms ; and about the relations of 
the arts among themselves and to the other activities 
of life. It may fairly be doubted if Arnold had ever 
wrought out for himself consistent conclusions on 
all or on most of these topics. Indeed, the mere 
juxtaposition of his name and a formal list of these 
topics suggests the kind of mock-serious depreca- 
tory paragraph with which the "unlearned belletristic 
trifler " was wont to reply to such strictures— a para- 
graph sure to carry in its tail a stinging bit of sarcasm 
at the expense of pedantry and unenlightened formal- 
ism. And yet, great as must be every one's respect for 
the thorough scholarship and widely varied accom- 
plishment that Arnold made so light of and carried off 
so easily, the doubt must nevertheless be suggested 
whether a more vigorous grasp on theory, and a more 
consistent habit of thinking out literary questions to 
their principles, would not have invigorated his work 
as a critic and given it greater permanence and richer 
suggestiveness. 



INTRODUCTIOiY. 



VI. 



It is, then, as an appreciator of what may perhaps 
be called the spiritual qualities of literature that 
Arnold is most distinctively a furtherer of criticism. 
An appreciator of beauty, — of true beauty wherever 
found, — that is what he would willingly be; and yet, 
as the matter turns out, the beauty that he most surely 
enjoys and reveals has invariably a spiritual aroma, — 
is the finer breath of intense spiritual life. Or, if 
spiritual be too mystical a word to apply to Homer 
and Goethe, perhaps Arnold should rather be termed 
an appreciator of beauty that is the effluence of noble 
character. 

The importance of appreciation in criticism, Arnold 
has himself described in one of \.\\t Mixed Essays : 
"Admiration is salutary and formative; . . . but 
things admirable are sown wide, and are to be gathered 
here and gathered there, not all in one place ; and 
until we have gathered them wherever they are to be 
found, we have not known the true salutariness and 
formativeness of admiration. The quest is large; 
and occupation with the unsound or half sound, de- 
light in the not good or less good, is a sore let and 
hindrance to us. Release from such occupation and 
delight sets us free for ranging farther, and for per- 
fecting our sense of beauty. He is the happy man, 
who, encumbering himself with the love of nothing 
which is not beautiful, is able to embrace the greatest 
number of things beautiful in his life." * 

^ Mixed Essays, ed. 1883, p. 210. 



lii IN TROD UCTION. 

On this disinterested quest then, for the beautiful, 
Arnold in his essays nominally fares forth. Yet cer- 
tain limitations in his appreciation, over and beyond 
his prevalent ethical interest, must forthwith be noted. 
Music, painting, and sculpture have seemingly noth- 
ing to say to him. In his Letlers there are only a i^^^ 
allusions to any of these arts, and such as occur do 
not surpass in significance the comments of the chance 
loiterer in foreign galleries or visitor of concert rooms. 
In his essays there are none of the correlations be- 
tween the effects and methods of literature and those 
of kindred arts that may do so much either to indi- 
vidualize or to illustrate the characteristics of poe- 
try. For x\rnold, literature and poetry make up the 
whole range of art. 

Within these limits, however, — the limits imposed by 
preoccupation with conduct and by carelessness of all 
arts except literature, — Arnold has been a prevailing 
revealer of beauty. Not his most hostile critic can 
question the delicacy of his perception, so far as he 
allows his perception free play. On the need of nice 
and ever nicer discriminations in the apprehension of 
the shifting values of literature, he has himself often 
insisted. Critics who let their likes and dislikes assert 
themselves turbulently, to the destruction of fine dis- 
tinctions, always fall under Arnold's condemnation. 
" When Mr. Palgrave dislikes a thing, he feels no pres- 
sure constraining him, either to try his dislike closely 
or to express it moderately ; he does not mince mat- 
ters, he gives his dislike all its own way. . . He dis- 
likes the architecture of the Rue Rivoli, and he puts 
it on the level with the architecture of Belsfravia and 



m TROD UCTION. liii 

Gower Street ; he lumps them all together in one con- 
demnation ; he loses sight of the shade, the distinction 
whicli is here everything." ^ For a similar blurring 
of impressions, Professor Newman is taken to task, 
though in Newman's case the faulty appreciations are 
due to a different cause: " Like all learned men, ac- 
customed to desire definite rules, he draws his con- 
clusions too absolutely ; he wants to include too much 
under his rules ; he does not quite perceive that in 
poetical criticism the shade, the fine distinction, is 
everything ; and that, when he has once missed this, 
in all he says he is in truth but beating the air." '^ To 
appreciate literature more and more sensitively in 
terms of " an undulating and diverse temperament," 
this is the ideal that Arnold puts before literary criti- 
cism. 

His own appreciations of poetry are probably 
richest, most discriminating, and most disinterested in 
the lectures on Translating Homer. The imaginative 
tact is unfailing with which he-renders the contour 
and the surface-qualities of the various poems that he 
comments on; and equally noteworthy is the divining 
instinct with which he captures the spirit of each 
poet and sets it before us with a phrase or a symbol. 
The " inversion and pregnant conciseness " of Milton's 
style, its "laborious and condensed fullness"; the 
plainspokenness, freshness, vigorousness, and yet 
fancifulness and curious complexity of Chapman's 
style; Spenser's ''sweet and easy slipping move- 



^ Essays^ i., ed. 1 891, p. 73. 

- 0)1 Ti'anslaling Horner^ ed. 1883, p. 246. 



I 



liv INTRODUCTION. 

ment "; Scott's "bastard epic style"; the "one 
continual falsetto " of Macaulay's " pinchbeck Rotnaii 
Ballads "y all these characterizations are delicately 
sure in their phrasing and suggestion, and are the 
clearer because they are made to stand in continual 
contrast with Homer's style, the rapidity, directness, 
simplicity, and nobleness of which Arnold keeps ever 
present in our consciousness. Incidentally, too, such 
suggestive discriminations as that between simplesse 
and simpliciti^ the " semblance " of simplicity and the 
" real quality," are made ours by the critic, as he goes 
on with his pursuit of the essential qualities of 
Homeric thought and diction. To read these lectures 
is a thoroughly tempering process; a process that 
renders the mind and imagination permanently finer 
in texture, more elastic, more sensitively sure in tone, 
and subtly responsive to the demands of good art. 

The essay on the Study of Poetry which was written 
as preface to Ward's English Poets is also rich in 
appreciation, and at times almost as disinterested as 
the lectures on Homer ; yet perhaps never quite so 
disinterested. For in the Study of Poetry Arnold is 
persistently aware of his conception of " the grand 
style " and bent on winning his readers to make it 
their own. Only poets who attain this grand style 
deserve to be "classics," and the continual insistence 
on the note of **high seriousness" — its presence or 
absence — becomes rather wearisome. Moreover, 
Arnold's preoccupation with this ultimate manner and 
quality tends to limit a trifle the freedom and delicate 
truth of his appreciations of other manners and minor 
qualities. At times, one is tempted to charge Arnold 



lAn'KODOClUO.V. Iv 

with some of the unresponsiveness of temperament 
that he ascribes to systematic critics, and to find 
even Arnold himself under the perilous sway of a fixed 
idea. Yet, when all is said, the Study of Poetry is full 
of fine things and does much to widen the range of ap- 
preciation and at the same time to make appreciation 
more certain. " The liquid diction, the fluid move- 
ment of Chaucer, his large, free, sound representation 
of things"; Burns's "touches of piercing, sometimes 
almost intolerable pathos," his " archness," too, and his 
" soundness" ; Shelley, "that beautiful spirit building 
his many-coloured haze of words and images ^ Pinna- 
cled dim in the intense inane' "; these, and other inter- 
pretations like them, are easily adequate and carry the 
qualities of each poet readily into the minds and 
imaginations of sympathetic readers. Appreciation is 
much the richer for this essay on the Study of Poetry 
Nor must Arnold's suggestive appreciations of prose 
style be forgotten. Several of them have passed into 
standard accounts of clearly recognized varieties of 
prose diction. Arnold's phrasing of the matter has 
made all sensitive English readers permanently more 
sensitive to " the warm glow, blithe movement, and 
soft pliancy of life " of the Attic style, and also perma- 
nently more hostile to " the over-heavy richness and 
encumbered gait " of the Asiatic style. Equally good 
is his account of the Corintliian style : "It has glitter 
without warmth, rapidity without ease, effectiveness 
without charm. Its characteristic is that it has no 
soul; all it exists for, is to get its ends, to make its 
points, to damage its adversaries, to be admired, to 
triumph. A style so bent on effect at the expense 



1 VI INI 'ROD UC TIOU. 

of soul, simplicity, and delicacy; a style so little 
studious of the charm of the great models; so far 
from classic truth and grace, must surely be said to 
have the note of provinciality." ' *' Middle-class 
Macaulayese " is his name for Hepworth Dixon's 
style; a style which he evidently regards as likely to 
gain favor and establish itself. " 1 call it Macau- 
layese . . . because it has the same internal and ex- 
ternal characteristics as Macaulay's style; the external 
characteristic being a hard metallic movement with 
notliing of the soft play of life, and the internal char- 
acteristic being a perpetual semblance of hitting the 
right nail on the head without the reality. And I call 
it middle-class Macaulayese, because it has these 
faults without the compensation of great studies and 
of conversance with great affairs, by which Macaulay 
partly redeemed them." "^ It will, of course, be noted 
that these latter appreciations deal for the most part 
with divergences from the beautiful in style, but they 
none the less quicken and refine the aesthetic sense. 

Finally, throughout the two series of miscellaneous 
essays there is, in the midst of much business with 
ethical matters, an often-recurring free play of imagi- 
nation in the interests, solely and simply, of beauty. 
Many are the happy windfalls these essays offer of 
delicate interpretation both of poetic effect and of 
creative movement, and many are the memorable 
phrases and symbols by which incidentally the essen- 
tial quality of a poet or prose writer is securely lodged 
in the reader's consciousness. 

' Essays, i., ed. 1S91, p. 75. 
'^Friendship's Garland, ed. 1S83, p. 279, 



IN TROD UCTION. Ivii 

And yet, wide ranging and delicately sensitive as are 
Arnold's appreciations, the feeling will assert itself, in 
a final survey of his work in literary criticism, that he 
nearly always has designs on his readers and that 
appreciation is a means to an end. The end in view 
is the exorcism of the spirit of Philistinism. Arnold's 
conscience is haunted by this hideous apparition as 
Luther's was by the devil, and he is all the time 
metaphorically throwing his inkstand at the spectre. 
Or, to put the matter in another way, his one dominat- 
ing wish is to help modern Englishmen to "conquer 
the hard unintelligence," which is " their bane ; to 
supple and reduce it by culture, by a growth in the 
variety, fullness, and sweetness of their spiritual life " ; 
and the appreciative interpretation of literature to as 
wide a circle of readers as possible seems to him one 
of the surest ways of thus educing in his fellow-coun- 
trymen new spiritual qualities. It must not be for- 
gotten that Matthew Arnold was the son of Thomas 
Arnold, master of Rugby ; there is in him a hereditary 
pedagogic bias— an inevitable trend toward moral 
suasion. The pedagogic spirit has suffered a sea- 
change into something rich afid strange, and yet 
traces of its origin linger about it. . Criticism with 
Arnold is rarely, if ever, irresponsible; it is our school- 
master to bring us to culture. 

In a letter of 1863 Arnold speaks of the great trans- 
formation which " in this concluding half of the cen- 
tury the English spirit is destined to undergo." "I 
shall do," he adds, " what I can for this movement in 
literature; freer perhaps in that sphere than I could 
be in any other, but with the risk always before me, if 



Iviii INTRODUCTION. 

I cannot charm the wild beast of Philistinism while 
I am trying to convert him, of being torn in pieces 
by him." ' In charming the wild beast Arnold ulti- 
mately succeeded; and yet there is a sense in which he 
fell a victim to his very success. The presence of the 
beast, and the necessity of fluting to him debonairly 
and winningly, fastened tliemselves on Arnold's imagi- 
nation and subdued him to a comparatively narrow 
range of subjects and set of interests. From the point 
of view, at least, of what is desirable in appreciative 
criticism Arnold was injured by his sense of responsi- 
bility ; he lacks the detachment and the delicate 
mobility that are the redeeming traits of modern 
dilettantism. 

If, then, we regard Arnold as a writer with a task to 
accomplish, with certain definite regenerative pur- 
poses to carry out, with a body of original ideas about 
the conduct of life to inculcate, we must conclude that 
he succeeded admirably in his work, followed out his 
ideas with persistence and temerity through many 
regions of human activity, and embodied them with 
unwearying ingenuity and persuasiveness in a wide 
range of discussions.* If, on the other hand, we con- 
sider him solely as a literary critic, we are forced to 
admit that he is not the ideal literary critic; he is not 
the ideal, literary critic because he is so much more, 
and because his interests lie so decisively outside of 
art. Nor is this opinion meant to imply an ultimate 
theory of art for art's sake, or to suggest any limita- 
tion of criticism to mere impressionism or appreciation. 

^Letters, ed. 1896, i. 240, 



INTRODUCTION. lix 

Literature must be known historically and philo- 
sophically before it can be adequately appreciated ; 
that is emphatically true. Art may or may not be 
justifiable solely as it is of service to society; that 
need not be debated. But, in any event, literary 
criticism, if it is to reach its utmost effectiveness, 
must regard works of art for the time being as self- 
justified integrations of beauty and truth, and so 
regarding them must record and interpret their power 
and their charm. And this temporary isolating proc- 
ess is just the process which Arnold very rarely, for 
the reasons that have been traced in detail, is willing 
or able to go through with. 

VII. 

When we turn to consider Arnold's literary style, 
we are forced to admit that this, too, has suffered from 
the strenuousness of his moral purpose; it has been 
unduly sophisticated, here and there, because of his 
desire to charm "the wild beast of Philistinism." 
To this purpose and this desire is owing, at least in 
part, that falsetto note — that half-querulous, half- 
supercilious artificiality of tone, — that is now and 
then to be heard in his writing. In point of fact, it 
would be easy to exaggerate the extent to which this 
note is audible ; an unprejudiced reader will find long 
continuous passages of even Arnold's most elaborately 
designed writing free from any trace of undue self- 
consciousness or of gentle condescension. And yet 
it is undeniable that when, apart from his Letters, 
Arnold's prose, as a whole, is compared with that of 



Ix INTRODUCTION. 

such a writer, for example, as Cardinal Newman, 
there is in Arnold's style, as the ear listens for the 
quality of the bell metal, not quite the same beauti- 
fully clear and sincere resonance. There seems to be 
now and then some unhappy warring of elements, 
some ill-adjustment of overtones, a trace of some flaw 
in mixing or casting. 

Are not these defects in Arnold's style due to his 
somewhat self-conscious attempt to fascinate a recal- 
citrant public? Is it not the assumption of a manner 
that jars on us often in Arnold's less happy moments? 
Has he not the pose of the man who overdoes bravado 
with the hope of getting cleverly through a pass which 
he feels a bit trying to his nerves? Arnold has a keen 
consciousness of the very stupid beast of Philistinism 
lying in wait for him ; and in the stress of the moment 
he is guilty of a little exaggeration of manner; he is 
just a shade unnatural in liis flippancy; he treads his 
measure with an unduly mincing flourish. 

Arnold's habit of half-mocking self-depreciation-and 
of insincere apology for supposititious personal short- 
comings has already been mentioned; to his contro- 
versial writings, particularly, it gives often a raspingly 
supercilious tone. He insists with mock humbleness 
that he is a *' mere belletristic trifler "; that he has no 
" system of philosophy with principles coherent, inter- 
dependent, subordinate, and derivative " to help him in 
the discussion of abstract questions. He assures us 
that he is merely ^' a feeble unit " of the *' English 
middle class "; he deprecates being called a professor 
because it is a title he shares *' with so many dis- 
tinguished men — Professor Pepper, Professor Ander- 



INTRODUCl^ION. Ixi 

son, Prvofessor Frickel, and others — who adorn it," he 
feels, much more than he does. These mock apologies 
are always amusing and yet a bit exasperating, too. 
AVhy should Arnold regard it, we ask ourselves, as 
such a relishing joke — the possibility that he has a 
defect? The implication of almost arrogant self-satis- 
faction is troublesomely present to us. Such passages 
certainly suggest that Arnold had an ingrained con- 
tempt for the '' beast " he was charming. 

Yet, when all is said, much of this supercilious satire 
is irresistibly droll, and refuses to be gainsaid. One 
of his most effective modes of ridiculing his opponents 
is through conjuring up imaginary scenes in which 
some ludicrous aspect of his opponent's case or char- 
acter is thrown into diverting prominence. Is it the 
pompous, arrogant self-satisfaction of the prosperous 
middle-class tradesman that Arnold wishes to satirize? 
And more particularly is it the futility of the Saturday 
Eevieiv in holding up Benthamism — the systematic 
recognition of such a smug man's ideal of selfish hap- 
piness — as the true moral ideal? Arnold represents 
himself as travelling on a suburban railway on which 
a murder has recently been committed, and as falling 
into chat with the middle-class frequenters of this 
route. The demoralization of these worthy folk, 
Arnold assures us, was " something bewildering." 
" Myself a transcendentalist (as the Saturday Review 
knows), I escaped the infection ; and, day after day, 
I used to ply my agitated fellow-travellers with all the 
consolations which my transcendentalism would nat- 
urally suggest to me. I reminded them how Caesar 
refused to take precautions against assassination, be- 



1 X i i IN TR OD UC TION. 

cause life was not worth having at the price of an 
ignoble solicitude for it. I reminded them what 
insignificant atoms we all are in the life of the world. 
'Suppose the worst to happen/ I said, addressing a 
portly jeweller from Cheapside; ' suppose even your- 
self to be the victim; il 7iy a pas dliomme necessairc. 
We should miss you for a day or two upon the Wood- 
ford Branch; but the great mundane movement 
would still go on, the gravel walks of your villa would 
still be rolled, dividends would still be paid at the 
Bank, omnibuses would still run, there would still be 
the old crush at the corner of Fenchurch Street.' All 
was of no avail. Nothing could moderate in the 
bosom of the great English middle class, their passion- 
ate, absorbing, almost bloodthirsty clinging to life." 
This is, of course, " admirable fooling"; and equally 
of course, the little imaginary scene serves per- 
fectly the purposes of Arnold's argument and turns 
into ridicule the narrowness and overweening self- 
importance of the smug tradesman. 

Another instance of Arnold's ability to conjure up 
fancifully a scene of satirical import may be adduced 
from the first chapter of Culture and Anaj'chy. Arnold 
has been ridiculing the worship of mere " bodily 
health and vigour " as ends in themselves. *' Why, 
one has heard people," he exclaims, " fresh from read- 
ing certain articles of the Times on the Registrar 
General's returns of marriages and births in this coun- 
try, who would talk of our large English families in 
quite a solemn strain, as if they had something in 
itself, beautiful, elevating, and meritorious in them ; 
as if the British Philistine would have only to present 



7.V TR OD UC TJOIV. Ixiii 

himself before the Great Judge with his twelve chil- 
dren, in order to be received among the sheep as a 
matter of right ! " ' 

It is noticeable that only in such scenes and pas- 
ages as these is Arnold's imagination active — scenes 
and passages that are a bit satirical, not to say mali- 
cious; on the other hand, scenes that have the limpid 
light and the winning quality of many in Cardinal 
Newman's writings — scenes that rest the eye and 
commend themselves simply and graciously to the 
heart — are in Arnold's prose hardly, if ever, to be 
found. This seems the less easy to explain inasmuch 
as his poetry, though of course not exceptionally 
rich in color, nevertheless shows everywhere a deli- 
cately sure sense of the surface of life. Nor is it 
only the large sweep of the earth-areas or the 
diversified play of the human spectacle that is 
absent from Arnold's prose ; his imagination does 
not even make itself exceptionally felt through con- 
crete phrasing or warmth of coloring; his style is 
usually intellectual almost to the point of wanness, and 
has rarely any of the heightened quality of so-called 
poetic prose. In point of fact, this conventional re- 
straint in Arnold's style, this careful adherence to the 
mood of prose, is a very significant matter ; it distin- 
guishes Arnold both as a writer and as a critic of life 
from such men as Carlyle and Mr. Ruskin. The mean- 
ing of this quietly conventional manner will be later 
considered in the discussion of Arnold's relation to 
his age. 

The two pieces of writing where Arnold's style has 

' Selections, p, 158. 



Ixiv INTRODUCTION, 

most fervor and imaginative glow are the essay on 
George Sand and the discourse upon Emerson, In 
each case he was returning in the choice of his sub- 
ject to an earlier enthusiasm, and was reviving a mood 
that had for him a certain romantic consecration. 
George Sand had opened for him, while he was still 
at the University, a whole world of rich and half- 
fearful imaginative experience ; a world where he had 
delighted to follow through glowing southern land- 
scapes the journeyings of picturesquely rebellious 
heroes and heroines, whose passionate declamation laid 
an irresistible spell on his English fancy. Her love 
and portrayal of rustic nature had also come to him 
as something graciously different from the saner and 
more moral or spiritual interpretation of rustic life to 
be found in Wordsworth's poems. Her personality, 
in all its passionate sincerity and with pathetically 
unrewarded aspirations, had imposed itself on Arnold's 
imagination both as this personality was revealed in 
her books and as it was afterward encountered in 
actual life. All these early feelings Arnold revives in 
a memorial essay written in 1877, one year after 
George Sand's death. From first to last the essay has 
a brooding sincerity of tone, an unconsidering frank- 
ness, and an intensity and color of phrase that are 
noteworthy. The descriptions of nature, both of tlie 
landscapes to be found in George Sand's romances and 
of those in the midst of which she herself lived, have 
a luxuriance and sensuousness of surface that Arnold 
rarely condescends to. The tone of unguarded devo- 
tion may be represented by part of the concluding 
paragraph of the essay : " It is silent, that eloquent 



INTRODUCTION. Ixv 

voice ! it is sunk, that noble, that speaking head! 
We sum up, as we best can, what she said to us, and 
we bid her adieu. From many hearts in many lands 
a troop of tender and grateful regrets converge 
toward her humble churchyard in Berry. Let them 
be joined by these words of sad homage from one of 
a nation which she esteemed, and which knew her 
very little and very ill." ^ There can be no question 
of the passionate sincerity and the poetic beauty of 
this passage. 

Comparable in atmosphere and tone to this essay on 
George Sand is the discourse on Emerson, in certain 
parts of which Arnold again lias the courage of his 
emotions. In the earlier paragraphs there is the same 
revivification of a youthful mood as in the essay on 
George Sand. There is also the same only half- 
restrained pulsation in the rhythm, an emotional throb 
that at times almost produces an effect of metre. 
" Forty years ago, when I was an undergraduate at 
Oxford, voices were in the air there which haunt my 
memory still. Happy the man who in that susceptible 
season of youth hears such voices! they are a posses- 
sion to him forever." ^ Of this discourse, however, 
only the introduction and the conclusion are of this 
intense, self-communing passionateness; the analysis 
of Emerson's qualities as writer and thinker, that 
makes up the greater part of the discourse, has 
Arnold's usual colloquial, self-consciously wary tone. 

A fairly complete survey of the characteristics of 
Arnold's style may perhaps best be obtained by rec- 

'^ Mixed Essays, ed. 1883, p. 260. 
'^Discourses in America, ed. 1894, p. 138. 



1 X V i IN TROD UC TION. 

ognizing in his prose writings four distinct manners. 
First may be mentioned his least compromising, 
severest, most exact style; it is most consistently 
present in the first of the Mixed Essays, that on 
Democracy (1861). The sentences are apt to be 
long and periodic. The structure of the thought 
is defined by means of painstakingly accurate articu- 
lations. Progress in the discussion is systematic and 
is from time to time conscientiously noted. The 
tone is earnest, almost anxious. A strenuous, system- 
atic, responsible style, we may call it. Somewhat 
mitigated in its severities, somewhat less palpably 
official, it remains the style of Arnold's technical 
reports upon education and of great portions of his 
writings on religious topics. It is, however, most 
adequately exhibited in the essay on Democracy. 

Simpler in tone, easier, more colloquial, more casual, 
is the style that Arnold uses in his literary essays, in 
the uncontroversial parts of the lectures on Trans- 
lating Homer, and in Culture and Anarchy. This 
style is characterized by its admirable union of ease, 
simplicity, and strength; by the affability of its tone, 
an affability, however, that never degenerates into 
over-familiarity or loses dignified restraint; by its 
disregard of method, or of the more pretentious 
manifestations of method; and by the delicate cer- 
tainty, with which, when at its best, it takes the 
reader, despite its apparently casual movement, over 
the essential aspects of the subject under discussion. 
This is really Arnold's most distinctive manner, and it 
will require, after his two remaining manners have been 
briefly noted, some further analysis. 



IN TR OD UC TION. Ix vii 

Arnold's third style is most apt to appear in contro- 
versial writings or in his treatment of subjects where he 
is particularly aware of his enemy, or particularly bent 
on getting a hearing from the inattentive through 
cleverly malicious satire, or particularly desirous of 
carrying things off with a nonchalant air. It appears 
in the controversial parts of the lectures on Trans- 
lating Horner^ in many chapters of Culture and 
Anarchy, and runs throughout Friendship' s Garland. 
Its peculiarly rasping effect upon many readers has 
already been described. It is responsible for much 
of the prejudice against Arnold's prose. 

Arnold's fourth style — intimate, rich in color, 
intense in feeling, almost lyrical in tone — is the style 
that has just been characterized in the discussion of 
the essays on George Sand and on Emerson. There 
are not many passages in Arnold's prose where this 
style has its way with him. But these passages are 
so individual, and seem to reveal Arnold with such 
novelty and truth, that the style that pervades them 
deserves to be put by itself. 

The style usually taken as characteristically 
Arnold's is that here classed as his second, with a 
generous admixture of the third. Many of the 
qualities of this style have already been suggested as 
illustrative of certain aspects of Arnold's temperament 
or habits of thought. Various important points, how- 
ever, still remain to be appreciated. 

Colloquial in its rhythms and its idiom this style 
surely is. It is fond of assenting to its own proposi- 
tions; "well" and ''yes" often begin its sentences — 
signs of its casual and tentative mode of advance. 



Ixviii INTRODUCTION. 

Arnold's frequent use of "well" and "yes" and 
neglect of the anxiously demonstrative "now," at the 
opening of his sentences mark unmistakably the 
unrigorousness of his method. An easily negligent 
treatment of the sentence, too, is often noticeable; a 
subject is left suspended while phrase follows phrase, 
or even while clause follows clause, until, quite as in 
ordinary talk, the subject must be repeated, the begin- 
ning of the sentence must be brought freshly to mind. 
Often Arnold ends a sentence and begins the next 
with the same word or phrase; this trick is better 
suited to talk than to formal discourse. Indeed, 
Arnold permits himself not a few of the inaccuracies 
of everyday speech. He uses the cleft infinitive; ^ he 
introduces relative clauses with superfluous " and " '^ 
or "but";^ he confuses the present participle with 
the verbal noun and speaks, for example, of " the 
creating a current"; and he invariably "tries and 
does " a thing instead of " trying to do " it. Finally, 
his prose abounds in exclamations and in Italicized 
words or phrases, and so takes on much of the rhythm 
and manner of talk. A brief quotation from Literature 
and Dogma will make this clear. " But the gloomy, 
oppressive dream is now over. * Lei us return to 
Nature ! ' And all the world salutes with pride and 
joy the Renascence, and prays to Heaven : * Oh, that 
Ishmael might live before thee ! ' Surely the future 
belongs to this brilliant newcomer, with his animating 
maxim: Let us return to Nature! Ah, what pitfalls 

^Selections, p. Ii6, 1. 24. '^Selections, p. 114, 1. 6. 

"^Essays in Criticism^ ed. 1891, i. 88. 



INTRODUCTION. Ixix 

are in that word Nature ! Let us return to art and 
science, which are a part of Nature; yes. Let us 
return to a proper conception of righteousness, to a 
true sense of the method and secret of Jesus, which 
have been all denaturalized; yes. But, * Let us return 
io Nature!' — do you mean that we are to give full 
swing to our inclinations? " ^ The colloquial character 
of these exclamations and the search, through the use 
of Italics, for stress like the accent of speech are 
unmistakable. 

Arnold's fundamental reason, conscious or uncon- 
scious, for the adoption of this colloquial tone and 
manner, may probably be found in the account of the 
ultimate purpose of all his writing, given near the close 
of Culture and Anarchy j he aims, not to inculcate an 
absolutely determinate system of truth, but to stir his 
readers into the keenest possible self-questioning over 
the worth of their stock ideas. " Socrates has drunk 
his hemlock and is dead; but in his own breast does 
not every man carry about with him a possible Socrates, 
in that power of disinterested play of consciousness 
upon his stock notions and habits, of which this wise 
and admirable man gave all through his lifetime the 
great example, and which was the secret of his incom- 
parable influence? And he who leads men to call forth 
and exercise in themselves this power, and who busily 
calls it forth and exercises it in himself, is at the pres- 
ent moment, perhaps, as Socrates was in his time, 
more in concert with the vital working of men's minds, 
and more effectually significant, than any House of 

^Literature and Dogma, ed. 1893, p. 321. 



Ixx INTRODUCTION. 

Commons' orator, or practical operator in politics." * 
This dialectical habit of mind is, Arnold believes, best 
induced and stimulated by the free colloquial manner 
of writing that lie usually adopts. 

In the choice of words, however, Arnold is not 
noticeably colloquial. Less often in Arnold than in 
Newman is a familiar phrase caught audaciously from 
common speech and set with a sure sense of fitness and 
a vivifying effect in the midst of more formal expres- 
sions. His style, though idiomatic, stops short of the 
vocabulary of every day; it is nice — instinctively 
edited. Certain words are favorites with him, and 
moreover, as is so often the case with the literary tem- 
perament, these words reveal some of his special pre- 
occupations. Such words are lucidity^ urbanity, 
amenity, fluid (as an epithet for style), vital, puissant. 

Arnold is never afraid of repeating a word or a 
phrase, hardly enough afraid of this. His trick of 
ending one sentence and beginning the next with the 
same set of words has already been noted. At times, 
his repetitions seem due to his attempt to write down 
to his public ; he will not confuse them by making 
them grasp the same idea twice through two different 
forms of speech. Often, his repetitions come palpa- 
bly from sheer fondness for his own happy phraseology. 
His description of Shelley as " a beautiful and in- 
effectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings 
in vain," pleases him so well that he carries it over 
entire from one essay to another; even a whole page 
of his w^riting is sometimes so transferred. 

' Culture and Anarchy, ed. 1883, p. 205. 



IN TROD UC TlOISr. Ixxi 

And Indeed iteration and reiteration of single phrases 
or forms of words is a mannerism with Arnold, and at 
times proves one of his most effective means both for 
stamping his own ideas on the mind of the public and 
for ridiculing his opponents. Many of his positive 
formulas have become part and parcel of the modern 
literary man's equipment. His account of poetry as 
" a criticism of life "; his plea for " high seriousness " 
as essential to a classic; his pleasant substitute for the 
old English word God — " the not ourselves which 
makes for righteousness"; 'Mucidity of mind"; 
" natural magic " in the poetic treatment of nature ; 
"the grand style" in poetry; these phrases of his 
have passed into the literary consciousness and carried 
with them at least a superficial recognition of many of 
his ideas. 

Iteration Arnold uses, too, as a weapon of ridicule. 
He isolates some unluckily symbolic phrase of his 
opponent's, points out its damaging implications or its 
absurdity, and then repeats it pitilessly as an ironical 
refrain. The phrase gains in grotesqueness at each 
return — '' sweetening and gathering sweetness ever- 
more " — and finally seems ta the reader to contain the 
distilled quintessence of the foolishness inherent in the 
view that Arnold ridicules. It is in this way that in 
Culture and Anarchy the agitation to " enable a man to 
marry his deceased wife's sister " becomes symbolic of 
all the absurd fads of " liberal practitioners." Simi- 
larly, when he is criticising the cheap enthusiasm with 
which democratic politicians describe modern life, 
Arnold culls from the account of a Nottingham child- 
murder the phrase, " Wragg is in custody," and adds 



Ixxii hVTRODUCTION: 

it decoratively after every eulogy on present social 
conditions. Or again the Times at a certain diplo- 
matic crisis exhorts the Government to set forth 
England's claims "with promptitude and energy";^ 
and this grandiloquent and under the circumstances 
empty phrase becomes, as Arnold persistently rings its 
changes, irresistibly funny as symbolic of cheap bluster. 
Whole sentences are often reiterated by Arnold in this 
same satirical fashion. In the course of a somewhat 
atrabilious criticism he had been attacked by Mr. 
Frederic Harrison as being a mere dilettante and as 
having " no philosophy with coherent, interdependent, 
subordinate, and derivative principles." ^ This latter 
phrase, with its bristling array of epithets, struck Arnold 
as delightfully redolent of pedantry; and, as has already 
been noted, it recurs again and again in his writings in 
passages of mock apology and ironical self-deprecia- 
tion. Readers of Literature and Science^ too, will re- 
member how amusingly Arnold plays with " Mr. 
Darwin's famous proposition that ' our ancestor was 
a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed 
ears, probably arboreal in his habits.'"^ It should 
be noted that in all these cases the phrase that is 
reiterated has a symbolic quality, and therefore, in 
addition to its delicious absurdity, comes to possess 
a subtly argumentative value. 

Akin to Arnold's skillful use of reiteration is his 
ingenuity in the invention of telling nicknames. His 

^ Friendship' s Garland^ ed. 1883, p. 285. 
- Culture and Anarchy, ed. 1883, p. 56. 
"^Discourses in America^ ed. i8g4, p. no. 



IN TR on UC TION'. Ixxiii 

classification of his fellow-countrymen as Barbarians, 
Philistines, and Populace has become common prop- 
erty. The Nonconformist because of his unyielding 
sectarianism he compares to Ephraim, " a wild ass 
alone by himself." ^ To Professor Huxley, who has 
been talking of " the Levites of culture," Arnold sug- 
gests that " the poor humanist is sometimes apt to 
regard " men of science as the " Nebuchadnezzars " 
of culture. T/ie Church and State Review Arnold 
dubs ** the High Church rhinoceros "; the Record is 
"the Evangelical hyena." ^ 

It is interesting to note how often Arnold's satire 
has a biblical turn. His mind is saturated with 
Bible history and his memory stored with biblical 
phraseology ; moreover, allusions whether to the inci- 
dents or the language of the Bible are sure to be taken 
by an English audience, and hence Arnold frequently 
points a sentence or a comment by a scriptural turn of 
phrase or illustration. Many of the foregoing nick- 
names come from biblical sources. The lectures on 
Homer offer one admirable instances of Scripture quo- 
tation. Arnold has been urged to define the grand 
style. With his customary dislike of abstractions, he 
protests against the demand. " Alas! the grand style 
is the last matter in the world for verbal definition to 
deal with adequately. One may say of it as is said of 
faith: 'One must feel it in order to know what it is.' 
But, as of faith, so too we may say of nobleness, of 
the grand style: ' Woe to those who know it not ! ' 
yet this expression, though indefinable, has a charm; 

1 Culture and Anarchy, ed. 1883, p. xxxviii. 

2 Selections, p. 28. 



Ixxi V IN TROD UC TIOM. 

one is the better for considering it; bonum est, nos hie 
esse; nay, one loves to try to explain it, though one 
knows that one must speak imperfectly. For those, 
then, who ask the question. What is the grand style? 
with sincerity, I will try to make some answer, inade- 
quate as it must be. For those who ask it mockingly 
I have no answer, except to repeat to them, with com- 
passionate sorrow, the Gospel words: Moriemini in 
peccatis vest?-is, Ye shall die in your sins." ^ 

An interesting comment on this habit of Arnold's 
of scriptural phrasing occurs in one of his letters: 
" The Bible," he says, " is the only book well enough 
known to quote as the Greeks quoted Homer, sure 
that the quotation would go home to every reader, 
and it is quite astonishing how a Bible sentence 
clinches and sums up an argument. * Where the 
State's treasure is bestowed,' etc., for example, saved 
me at least half a column of disquisition."^ A 
moment later he adds a charmingly characteristic 
explanation as regards his incidental use of Scripture 
texts: "I put it in the Vulgate Latin, as I always do 
when I am not earnestly serious." This habit of 
" high seriousness " in such matters, it is to be feared 
he in some measure outgrew. 

Arnold's fine instinct in the choice of words has 
thus far been illustrated chiefly as subservient to 
satire. In point of fact, however, it is subject to 
no such limitation. Whatever his purpose, he has 
in a high degree the faculty of putting words to- 
gether with a delicate congruity that gives them a 

^Selections, p. 83. "^Letters, i. 191. 



INTRODUCTION. Ixxv 

permanent hold on the imagination. In this power of 
fashioning memorable phrases he far surpasses New- 
man, and indeed most recent writers except those 
who have developed epigram and paradox into a 
meretricious manner. *'A free play of the mind;" 
** disinterestedness; '* "a current of true and fresli 
ideas;" "the note of provinciality;" "sweet reason- 
ableness;" "the method of inwardness;" " the secret 
of Jesus; " " the study of perfection; " " the power of 
conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the 
power of beauty, and the power of social life and 
manners" — how happily vital are all these phrases! 
How perfectly integrated! Yet they are unelaborate 
and almost obvious. Christianity is " the greatest and 
happiest stroke ever yet made for human perfection." 
"Burke saturates politics with thought." "Our 
august Constitution sometimes looks ... a colossal 
machine for the manufacture of Philistines." " Eng- 
lish public life . . . that Thyestean banquet of clap- 
trap." The Atlantic cable — " that great rope, with a 
Philistine at each end of it talking inutilities." These 
sentences illustrate still further Arnold's deftness of 
phrasing. But with the last two or three we return to 
the ironical manner that has already been exemplified. 
In his use of figures Arnold is sparing; similes are 
iQ\,\ metaphors by no means frequent. It may be 
questioned whether it is ever the case with Arnold as 
with Newman that a whole paragraph is subtly con- 
trolled in its phrasing by the presence of a single 
figure in the author's mind. Simpler in this respect 
Arnold's style probably is than even Newman's; its 
general inferiority to Newman's style in point of sim- 



Ixxvi INTRODUCTION. 

plicity is owing to the infelicities of tone and manner 
that have already been noted. 

Illustrations Arnold uses liberally and happily. He 
excels in drawing them patly from current events and 
the daily prints. This increases both the actuality of 
his discussion — its immediacy — and its appearance 
of casualness, of being a pleasantly unconsidered trifle. 
For example, the long and elaborate discussion, Cul- 
ture and Anarchy, begins with an allusion to a recent 
article in the Quarterly Review on Sainte-Beuve, and 
turns over and over the use of the word curiosity that 
occurs in that article. Arnold is thus led to his 
analysis of culture. Later in the same chapter, refer- 
ences occur to such sectarian journals as the Non- 
conformist, and to current events as reported and 
criticised in their columns. Even in essays dealing 
with purely literary topics — in such an essay as that 
on Eugenie de Guerin — there is this same actuality. 
" While I was reading the journal of Mdlle. de 
Guerin," Arnold tells us, "there came into my hands 
the memoir and poems of a young Englishwoman, Miss 
Emma Tatham"; and then he uses this memoir to 
illustrate the contrasts between the poetic traditions 
of Romanism and the somewhat sordid intellectual 
poetry of English sectarian life. This closeness of 
relation between Arnold's writing and his daily expe- 
rience is very noticeable and increases the reader's 
sense of the novelty and genuineness and immediacy 
of what he reads; it conduces to that impression of 
vitality that is perhaps, in the last analysis, the most 
characteristic impression the reader carries away from 
Arnold's writings. 



INTRODUCTION. Ixxvii 



VIII. 

And indeed the union in Arnold's style of actuality 
with distinction becomes a very significant matter 
when we turn to consider his precise relation to his 
age, for it suggests what is perhaps the most striking 
characteristic of his personality — his reconciliation of 
conventionality with fineness of spiritual temper. In 
this reconciliation lies the secret of Arnold's relation 
to his romantic predecessors and to the men of his 
own time. He accepts the actual, conventional life 
of the everyday world frankly and fully, as the earlier 
idealists had never quite done, and yet he retains a 
strain of other-worldliness inherited from the dreamers 
of former generations. Arnold's gospel of culture is 
an attempt to import into actual life something of the 
fine spiritual fervor of the Romanticists with noiie of 
the extravagance or the remoteness from fact of those 
" madmen " — those idealists of an earlier age. 

Like the Romanticists, Arnold really gives to the 
imagination and the emotions the primacy in life ; like 
the Romanticists he contends against formalists, sys- 
tem-makers, and all devotees of abstractions. It is by 
an exquisite tact, rather than by logic, that Arnold in 
all doubtful matters decides between good and evil. 
He keeps to the concrete image ; he is an appreciator 
of life, not a deducer of formulas or a demonstrator. 
He is continually concerned about what ought to be ; 
he is not cynically content with the knowledge of 
what is. And yet, unlike the Romanticists, Arnold is 
in the world, and of it ; he has given heed to the 



Ixxviii INTRODUCTION. 

world-spirit's warning, "submit, submit"; he has 
** learned the Second Reverence, for things around." 
In Arnold, imaginative literature returns from its ro- 
mantic quest for the Holy Grail and betakes itself 
half-humorously, and yet with now and then traces of 
the old fervor, to the homely duties of everyday life. 

Arnold had in his youth been under the spell of 
romantic poetry ; he had heard the echoes of " the 
puissant hail " of those " former men," whose " voices 
were in all men's ears." Indeed, much of his poetry 
is essentially a beautiful threnody over the waning 
of romance, and in its tenor bears witness alike 
to the thoroughness with which he had been imbued 
with the spirit of the earlier idealists and to his ina- 
bility to rest content with their relation to life and 
their accounts of it. It is the unreality of the ideal- 
ists that dissatisfies Arnold ; their visionary blindness 
to fact; their morbid distaste for the actual. Much 
as he delights in the poetry of Shelley and Coleridge, 
these qualities in their work seem to him unsound and 
injurious. Or at other times it is the capricious self- 
will of the Romanticists, their impotent isolation, their 
enormous egoism that impress him as fatally wrong. 
Even in Wordsworth he is troubled by a semi-untruth 
and by the lack of a courageous acceptance of the 
conditions of human life. Wordsworth's 



" Eyes avert their ken 
From half of human fate.' 



Tempered, then, as Arnold was by a deep sense of 
the beauty and nobleness of romantic and idealistic 



IN TROD UC ITOiY. 1 x x i x 

poetry, finely touched as he was into sympathy with 
the whole range of delicate intuitions, quivering 
sensibilities, and half-mystical aspirations that this 
poetry called into play, he yet came to regard its un- 
derlying conceptions of life as inadequate and mis- 
leading, and to feel the need of supplementing them by 
a surer and saner relation to the conventional world of 
common sense. The Romanticists lamented that 
**the world is too much with us." Arnold shared 
their dislike of the world of dull routine, their fear of 
the world that enslaves to petty cares ; yet he came 
more and more to distinguish between this world and 
the great world of common experience, spread out 
generously in the lives of all men ; more and more 
clearly he realized that the true land of romance is in 
this region of everyday fact, or else is a mere mirage ; 
that "America is here or nowhere." 

Arnold, then, souglit to correct the febrile unreality 
of the idealists by restoring to men a true sense of the 
actual values of life. In this attempt he had recourse to 
Hellenic conceptions with their sanity, their firm de- 
light in the tangible and the visible, their regard for 
proportion and symmetry — and more particularly to 
the Hellenism of Goethe. Indeed, Goethe may justly 
be called Arnold's master — the writer who had the 
largest share in determining the characteristic prin- 
ciples in his theory of life. Goethe's formula for the 
ideal life — /;;/ Ganzeit, Gulen, Wahrefi, resolut zu leben 
— sums up in a phrase the plea for perfection, for 
totality, for wisely balanced self-culture that Arnold 
is continually making throughout so many of his 
essays and books. 



Ixxx INTRODUCTION. 

Allusions to Goethe abound in Arnold's essays, and 
in one of his letters he speaks particularly of his close 
and extended reading of Goethe's works/ His splen- 
did poetic tributes to Goethe, in his Memorial Verses 
and Obermanit, have given enduring expression to his 
admiration for Goethe's sanity, insight, and serene cour- 
age. His frankest prose appreciation of Goethe occurs 
in A French Critic on Goethe, where he characterizes him 
as " the clearest, the largest, the most helpful thinker 
of modern times"; . . . "in the width, depth, and 
richness of his criticism of life, by far our greatest 
modern man."^ It is precisely in this matter of the 
criticism of life that Arnold took Goethe for master. 
Goethe, as Arnold saw, had passed through the tem- 
pering experiences of Romanticism ; he had rebelled 
against the limitations of actual life (in Werther, for 
example, and Goetz) and sought passionately for the 
realization of romantic dreams ; and he had finally 
come to admit the futility of rebellion and to recognize 
the treacherous evasiveness of emotional ideals ; he 
had learned the *' Second Reverence, for things 
around." He had found in self-development, in wise 
self-discipline for the good of society, the secret of suc- 
cessful living. Arnold's gospel of culture is largely 
a translation of Goethe's doctrine into the idiom of 
the later years of the century, and the minute adapta- 
tion of it to the special needs of Englishmen. There 
is in Arnold somewhat less sleek Paganism than in 
Goethe — a somewhat more genuine spiritual quality. 
But the wise limitation of the scope of human en- 

' Letters, ii. 165. ^ Mixed Essays, pp. 233-234= 



introduction: Ixxxi 

deavor to this world is the same with both ; so, too, is 
the sane and uncomplaining acceptance of fact and 
the concentration of all thought and effort on the pur- 
suit of tangible ideals of human perfection. Goethe 
tempered by Wordsworth — this is not an unfair ac- 
count of the derivation of Arnold's ideal. 

From one point of view, then, Arnold may fairly 
enough be called the special advocate of convention- 
ality. He recommends and practices conformity to 
the demands of conventional life. He has none of 
the pose or the mannerisms of the seer or the bard; he 
is even a frequenter of drawing rooms and a diner-out, 
and is fairly adept in the dialect and mental idiom of 
the frivolously-minded. In all that he writes, *' he 
delivers himself," as the heroine in Peacock's novel 
urged Scythrop [Shelley] to do, " like a man of this 
world." He pretends to no transcendental second- 
sight and indulges in none of Carlyle's spinning- 
dervish jargon. He is never guilty of Ruskin's occa- 
sional false sentiment or falsetto rhetoric. The world 
that he lives in is the world that exists in the minds and 
thoughts and feelings of the most sensible and culti- 
vated people who make up modern society; the world 
over which, as its presiding genius, broods the haunt- 
ing presence of Mr. George Meredith's Comic Spirit. 
It is '' in this world "• that " he has hope," in its 
ever greater refinement, in its ever greater compre- 
hensiveness, in its increasing ability to impose 
its standards on others. When he half pleads for 
an English Academy — he never quite pleads for 
one — he does this because of his desire for some 
organ by which, in art and literature, the collective 



Ixxxii INTRODUCTION. 

sense of the best minds in society assembled may 
make itself effective. So, too, when he pleads for the 
Established Church he does this for similar reasons ; 
he is convinced that it offers by far the best means for 
imposing widely upon the nation, as a standard of 
religious experience, what is most spiritual in the 
lives and aspirations of the greatest number of culti- 
vated people. In many such ways as these, then, 
Matthew Arnold's kingdom is a kingdom of this 
world. 

And yet, after all, Arnold " wears " his worldliness 
*' with a" very great "difference." If he be compared, 
for example, with other literary men of the world, — 
with Francis Jeffrey or Lord Macaulay or Lockhart, — 
there is at once obvious in him an all-pervasive 
quality that marks his temper as far subtler and finer 
than theirs. His worldliness is a worldliness of his 
own, ** compounded " out of many exquisite "simples." 
His faith in poetry is intense and absolute ; " the 
future of poetry," he declares, " is immense, because 
in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our 
race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and 
surer stay." This declaration contrasts strikingly 
with Macaulay's pessimistic theory of the essentially 
make-believe character of poetry — a theory that puts 
it on a level with children's games, and, like the 
still more puerile theory of Herr Max Nordau, looks 
forward to its extinction as the race reaches genuine 
maturity. Poetry always remains for Arnold the most 
adequate and beautiful mode of speech possible to 
man ; and this faith, which runs implicitly through all 
his writing, is plainly the outcome of a mood very 



INTRODUCTION. Ixxxiii 

different from that of the ordinary man of the world, 
and is the expression of an emotional refinement and 
a spiritual sensitiveness that are, at least in part, his 
abiding inheritance from the Romanticists. This faith 
is the manifestation of the ideal element in his nature, 
which, in spite of the plausible man-of-the-world 
aspect and tone of much of his prose, makes itself felt 
even in his prose as the inspirer of a kind of " divine 
unrest." 

In his Preface to his first series of Essays Arnold 
playfully takes to himself the name transcendentalist. 
To the stricter sect of the transcendentalists he can 
hardly pretend to belong. He certainly has none of 
their delight in envisaging mystery ; none of their 
morbid relish for an " O altitudo ! " provided only the 
altitude be wrapped in clouds. He believes, to be 
sure, in a "power not ourselves that makes for 
righteousness "; but his interest in this power and his 
comments upon it confine themselves almost wholly to 
its plain and palpable influence upon human conduct. 
Even in his poetry he can hardly be rated as more 
than a transcendentalist manque; and in his prose he 
is never so aware of the unseen as in his poetry. 

Yet, whether or no he be strictly a transcendentalist, 
Arnold is, in Disraeli's famous phrase, '' on the side of 
the angels "; he is a persistent and ingenious opponent 
of purely materialistic or utilitarian conceptions of 
life. " The kingdom of God is within you " ; this is 
a cardinal point in the doctrine of Culture. The 
highest good, that for which every man should con- 
tinually be striving, is an i?iner state of perfection ; 
material prosperity, political enactments, religious 



Ixxxiv INTRODUCTION. 

organizations — all these things are to be judged solely 
according to their furtherance of the spiritual well- 
being of the individual ; they are all mere machinery — 
more or less ingenious means for giving to every man 
a chance to make the most of his life. The true 
"ideal of human perfection " is "an inward spiritual 
activity, having for its characters increased sweetness, 
increased light, increased life, increased sympathy." ^ 
Arnold's worldliness, then, is a worldliness that holds 
many of the elements of idealism in solution, that has 
none of the cynical acquiescence of unmitigated 
worldliness, that throughout all its range shows the 
gentle urgency of a fine discontent with fact. 

To realize the subtle and high quality of Arnold's 
genius, one has but to compare him with men of 
science or with rationalists pure and simple, — with 
men like Professor Huxley, Darwin, or Bentham. 
Their carefulness for truth, their intellectual strength, 
their vast services to mankind are acknowledged even 
by their opponents. Yet Arnold has a far wider 
range of sensibilities than any one of them ; life plays 
upon him in far richer and more various ways ; it 
touches him into response through associations that 
have a more distinctively human character, and that 
have a deeper and a warmer color of emotion drawn 
out of the past of the race. In short, Arnold brings 
to bear upon the present a finer spiritual apprecia- 
tion than the mere man of the world or the mere man 
of science — a larger accumulation of imaginative ex- 
perience. Through this temperamental scope and 
refinement he is able, while accepting conventional 

' Selections, i. 172, 



INTRODilCTIOiV. Ixxxv 

and actual life, to redeem it in some measure from 
its routine and its commonplace character, and to 
import into it beauty and meaning and good from 
beyond the range of science or positive truth. All 
this comes from the fact that, despite his worldly con- 
formity, he has the romantic ferment in his blood. 
If his conformity be compared with that of the 
eighteenth century, — with the worldliness of Swift or 
Addison, — the enormous value of the romantic incre- 
ment cannot be missed. 

Finally, Arnold makes of life an art rather than a 
science, and commits the conduct of it to an exquisite 
tact, rather than to reason or demonstration. The 
imaginative assimilation of all the best experience of 
the past — this he regards as the right training to de- 
velop true tact for the discernment of good and evil 
in all practical matters, where probability must be the 
guide of life. We are at once reminded of Newman's 
Illative Sense, which was also an intuitive faculty for 
the dextrous apprehension of truth through the aid of 
the feelings and the imagination. But Arnold's new 
Sense comes much nearer than Newman's to being a 
genuinely sublimated Common Sense. Arnold's own 
flair in matters of art and life was astonishingly 
keen, and yet he would have been the last to exalt it 
as unerring. His faith is ultimately in the best in- 
stincts of the so-called remnant — in the collective 
sense of the most cultivated, most delicately percep- 
tive, most spiritually-minded people of the world. 
Through the combined intuitions of such men 
sincerely aiming at perfection, truth in all that per- 
tains to tlie conduct of life will be more and more 



Ixxxvi INTRODUCTION. 

nearly won. Because of this faith of his in sublimated 
worldly wisdom, Arnold, unlike Newman, is in sym- 
pathy with the Zeitgeist of a democratic age. 

And indeed here seems to rest Arnold's really most 
permanent claim to gratitude and honor. He accepts — 
with some sadness, it is true, and yet genuinely and 
generously — the modern age, with its scientific bias 
and its worldly preoccupations ; humanist as he is, half- 
romantic lover of an elder time, he yet masters his 
regret over what is disappearing and welcomes the 
present loyally. Believing, however, in the continuity 
of human experience, and above all in the transcendent 
worth to mankind of its spiritual acquisitions, won 
largely through the past domination of Christian 
ideals, he devotes himself to preserving the quint- 
essence of this ideal life of former generations, and 
insinuating it into the hearts and imaginations of 
men of a ruder age. He converts himself into a 
patient, courageous mediator between the old and 
the new. Herein he contrasts with Newman on 
the one hand, and with the modern devotees of 
aestheticism on the other hand. In the case of 
Newman, a delicately spiritual temperament, subdued 
even more deeply than Arnold's to Romanticism, 
shrunk before the immediacy and apparent anar- 
chy of modern life, and sought to realize its spir- 
itual ideals through the aid of mediaeval formulas 
and a return to mediaeval conceptions and standards 
of truth. Exquisite spirituality was attained, but at 
the cost of what some have called the Great Refusal. 
A like imperfect synthesis is characteristic of the fol- 
lowers of art for art's sake. They, too, give up com- 



INTRODUCTION'. Ixxxvii 

mon life as irredeemably crass, as unmalleable, 
irreducible to terms of the ideal. They turn for 
consolation to their own dreams, and frame for 
themselves a House Beautiful, where they may let 
these dreams have their way, *' far from the world's 
noise," and " life's confederate plea." Arnold, with a 
temperament perhaps as exacting as either of these 
other temperaments, takes life as it offers itself and 
does his best with it. He sees and feels its crude- 
ness and disorderliness ; but he has faith in the 
instincts that civilized men have developed in com- 
mon, and finds in the working of these instincts the 
continuous, if irregular, realization of the ideal. 



DATES IN ARNOLD'S LIFE. 



1822. Born at Laleham near Staines ; son of Dr. Thomas Arnold 

of Rugby. 
1841. Matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford. 

1843. Wins the Newdigate prize for English verse. 

1844. Graduated in honors. 

1845. Elected Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. 
1847-51. Private Secretary of Lord Lansdowne. 
1 85 1. Appointed Lay Inspector of Schools. 
1857-67. Professor of Poetry at Oxford. 

1870. Receives the degree of Doctor of Laws from Oxford. 

1883-84. Lectures in America. 

1886. Resigns his post as Inspector of Schools. 

1888. Death of Arnold. 

—From Men of the Time, ed. 1887. 



Ixxxix 



BIBLIOGRAPHY.* 



WORKS OF ARNOLD. 

1849. The Strayed Reveler. 

1852. Empedocles on Etna, 

1853. Poems. 

1855. Poems. Second Series. 

1858. Merope. 

1 86 1. Popular Education in France. 
*-^i86i. On Translating Homer. 
!• 1864. A French Eton. 
^ 1865. Essays in Criticism, 
v.. 1867. On the Study of Celtic Literature. 

1867. New Poems. 
V^ 1868. Schools and Universities on the Continent. 
^ 1869. Culture and Anarchy. 
yy 1870. St. Paul and Protestantism. 

1871. Friendship's Garland. 

• 1873. Literature and Dogma. 

• 1875. God and the Bible. 

1877. Last Essays on Church and Religion. 

1879. Mixed Essays. 

1882. Irish Essays. 

1885. Discourses in America. 

1888. Essays in Criticism. Second Series. 

1888. Civilization in the United States. 

* For a complete list of Arnold's writings in prose and poetry, 
and of writings about Arnold, see the admirable Bibliography of 
Matthezv Arnold hy T. B. Smart, London, 1852. 



BIBLIOGRA PH Y. XCl 

ESSAYS ON ARNOLD'S PROSE. 

Appleton, C. E. A Plea for Metaphysics. Contemporary 
Review, xxviii. 923-947 ; xxix. 44-69. 

Birrell, Augustine. Res Judicatae. London, 1892. 

Blackie, John Stuart. Homer and his Translators. Macmil- 
lans Magazine, iv. 268-280. 

Burroughs, John. Indoor Studies. Boston, 1889. 

Etienne, Louis. La critique contemporaine en Angleterre. 
Revue des Deux Mondes, Ixii. 744-767. 

Hutton, R. H. Modern Guides of English Thought in 
Matters of Faith. London, 1887. 

Jacobs, Joseph. Literary Studies. London, 1895. • 

Knight, William. Studies in Philosophy. London, 1879. 

Lang, Andrew. Matthew Arnold. Century Magazine, xxiii. 
849-864. 

Robertson, John M. Modern Humanists. London, 1891. 

Saintsbury, George. Corrected Impressions. London, 1895. 

Shairp, J. C. Culture and Religion. Edinburgh, 1870. 

Sidgwick, Henry. The Prophet of Culture. Macmillan'i 
Magazine, xvi. 271-280. 

Spedding, James. Reviews and Discussions. London, 1879. 

Traill, H. D. Matthew Arnold. Contemporary Review, liii. 
86S-881. 



SELECTIONS. 



^be ^function of Criticism at tbe present (Time* 

Many objections have been made to a proposition 
which, in some remarks of mine on translating Homer, 
I ventured to put forth; a proposition about criticism, 
and its importance at the present day. I said : *^ Of 
5 the literature of France and Germany, as of the 
" intellect or\hairQ pe in general^ t hemain. effort, for 
now ^many ye ars^has been a cn ticar_effort ;_l]ie 
endeavoiir^n alLbrnnrhes of knowled ge, th eologyj, 
philosophy, history ,^Ttj^cience,_to_see_the object as 

lo'irritself it really is." I added, that owing to the 

operation in English literature of certain causes, 
'' almost the last thing for which one would come to 
English literature is just that very thing which now 
Europe most desires, — criticism"; and that the power 

15 and value of English literature was thereby impaired. 
More than one rejoinder declared that the importance 
I here assigned to criticism was excessive, and 
asserted the inherent superiority of the creative effort 
of the human spirit over its critical effort. And the 

20 other day, having been led by a Mr. Shairp's excellent 
notice of Wordsworth ^ to turn again to his biography, 

' I cannot help thinking that a practice, common in England 
during the last century, and still followed in France, of printing a 



2 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

I found, in the words of this great man, whom I, for 
one, must always listen to with the profoundest re- 
spect, a sentence passed on the critic's business, which 
seems to justify every possible disparagement of it. 
Wordsworth says in one of his letters: — 5 

" The writers in these publications " (the Reviews), 
" while they prosecute their inglorious employment, 
cannot be supposed to be in a state of mind very 
favourable for being affected by the finer influences of 
a thing so pure as genuine poetry." lo 

And a trustworthy reporter of his conversation 
quotes a more elaborate judgment to the same effect: — 

" Wordsworth holds the critical power very low, in- 
finitely lower than the inventive ; and he said to-day 
that if the quantity of time consumed in writing crit- 15 
iques on the works of others were given to original 
composition, of whatever kind it might be, it would 
be much better employed ; it would make a man find 
out sooner his own level, and it would do infinitely 
less mischief. A false or malicious criticism may do 20 
much injury to the minds of others, a stupid inven- 
tion, either in prose or verse, is quite harmless." 

It is almost too much to expect of poor human 
nature, that a man capable of producing some effect 

notice of this kind, — a notice by a competent critic, — to serve as 
an introduction to an eminent author's works, might be revived 
among us with advantage. To introduce all succeeding editions 
of Wordsworth, Mr. Shairp's notice might, it seems to me, 
excellently serve ; it is written from the point of view of an 
admirer, nay, of a disciple, and that is right ; but then the disciple 
must be also, as in this case he is, a critic, a man of 'letters, not, 
as too often happens, some relation or friend with no qualification 
for his task except affection for his author. 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 3 

in one line of literature, should, for the greater good 
of society, voluntarily doom himself to impotence and 
obscurity in another. Still less is this to be expected 
from men addicted to the composition of the '' false 
5 or malicious criticism " of which Wordsworth speaks. 
However, everybody would admit that a false or 
malicious criticism had better never have been written. 
Everybody, too, would be willing to admit, as a general 
proposition, that the critical faculty is lower than 

lo the inventive. But is it true that criticism is really, 
in itself, a baneful and injurious employment ; is it 
true that all time given to writing critiques on the 
works of others would be much better employed if it 
were given to original composition, of whatever 

15 kind this may be ? Is it true that Johnson had better 
have gone on producing more Irenes instead of writ- 
ing his Lives of the Poets; nay, is it certain that 
Wordsworth himself was better employed in making 
his Ecclesiastical Sonnets than when he made his 

20 celebrated Preface, so full of criticism, and criticism 
of the works of others ? Wordsworth was himself 
a great critic, and it is to be sincerely regretted that 
he has not left us more criticism ; Goethe was one of 
the greatest of critics, and we may sincerely congratu- 

25 late ourselves that he has left us so much criticism. 
Without wasting time over the exaggeration which 
Wordsworth's judgment on criticism clearly contains, 
or over an attempt to trace the causes, — not difficult, 
I think, to be traced, — which may have led Words- 

30 worth to this exaggeration, a critic may with advan- 
tage seize an occasion for trying his own conscience, 
and for asking himself of what real service at any 



4 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

given moment the practice of criticism either is or 
may be made to his own mind and spirit, and to the 
minds and spirits of others. 

The critical power is of lower rank than the crea- 
tive. True ; but in assenting to this proposition, one 5 
or two things are to be kept in mind. It is undeni- 
able that the exercise of a creative power, that a free 
creative activity, is the highest function of man ; it is 
proved to be so by man's finding in it his true happi- 
ness. But it is undeniable, also, that men may have the lo 
sense of exercising this free creative activity in other 
ways than in producing great works of literature or 
art ; if it were not so, all but a very few men would 
be shut out from the true happiness of all men, Th^ey^ 
may haveiMn_w^n2doing^ they may have it in le arn- 15 
ing, they may have it even in criticising. This is one 
thing to be kept m~mind. Another is, that the exer- 
cise of the creative power in the production of great 
works of literature or art, however high this exercise 
of it may rank, is not at all epochs and under all con- 20 
ditions possible ; and that therefore labour may be 
vainly spent in attempting it, which might with more 
fruit be used in preparing for it, in rendering it possi- 
ble. This creative power works with elements, with 
materials ; what if it has not those materials, those 25 
elements, ready for its use ? In that case it must 
surely wait till they are ready. , Now, in literature. — 
I will limit myself to literature, for it is about litera- 
ture that the question arises, — t he elements with 
which the creative power works are ideas ; the best 30 
ideas on every matter which literature touches, cur- 
rent at the time. At any rate we may lay it down as 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 5 

certain that in modern literature no manifestation of 
the creative power not working with these can be very 
important or fruitful. And I say «/r;Y;2/at the time, 
not merely accessible at the time ; for creative literary 
5 genius does not principally show itself in discovering 
new ideas, that is rather the business of the philos- 
opher. The grand work of literary genius is a work 
of s yntliesis and exposition^ not of analysis and dis- 
covery ; its gift lies in the faculty of being happily 

lo inspired by a certam intellectual and spiritual atmos^^ 
pherejiyy^lTcertain order of ideas, when it finds itself 
in them ; of dealing divinely with these ideas, present- 
i n g the rn in the~rn ost eff e ctive an d _at t rac tive comb i r _ 
nation s, — making beautiful works with them, in short. 

15 But it must have the atmosphere, it must find itself 
amidst the order of ideas, in order to work freely ; 
and these it is not so easy to command. This is why 
great creative epochs in literature are so rare, this is 
why there is so much that Is^unsa t i sf acTor y~m tti e pTa^ 

20 tiTTclions ^ many mehlpf real genius ;^ because, for the— 

^"^reation of a_ master-work of literature two powers_ 
must concur, the power of the man and the power of_ 
the mo ment7?L^§_t he-man isjnot enough without the 
'mbrrient ; the creative power has, for its happy exer- 

25 cise, appointed elements, and those elements are not 
in its own control. 

N a y, they are more within thg_co ntrol of the cr itical^ 
power. It is the business of the critical power, as I 
said in the words already quoted, " in all branches of 

30 knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, 
to see the object as in itself it really is."" Thus it 
tends, at last, to make an intellectual situation of 



6 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

which the creative power can profitably avail itself. 
It tends to establish an order of ideas, if not absolutely 
true, yet true by comparison with that which it dis- 
places ; to make the best ideas prevail. Presently 
these new ideas reach society, the touch of truth is 5 
the touch of life, and there is a stir and growth every- 
where ; out of this stir and growth come the creative 
epochs of literature. 

Or, to narrow our range, and quit these considera- 
tions of the general march of genius and of society, — lo 
consideration? which are apt to become too abstract 
and impalpable, — every one can see that a poet, for 
instance, ought to know life and the world before deal- 
ing with them in poetry ; and life and the world 
being in modern times very complex things, the crea- 15 
tion of a modern poet, to be worth much, implies 
a great critical effort behind it ; else it must be a com- 
paratively poor, barren, and short-lived affair. This 
is why Byron's poetry had so little endurance in it, 
and Goethe's so much ; both Byron and Goethe had 20 
a great productive power, but Goethe's was nourished 
by a great critical effort providing the true materials 
for it, and Byron's was not ; Goethe knew life and the 
world, the poet's necessary subjects, much more com- 
prehensively and thoroughly than Byron. He knew a 25 
great deal more of them, and he knew them much 
more as they really are. 

It has long seemed to me that the burst of creative 
activity in our literature, through the first quarter of 
this century, had about it in^facL something prema- 30 
ture ; and that from this cause its productions are 
doomed, most of them, in spite of the sanguine hopes 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 7 

which accompanied and do still accompany them, to 
prove hardly more lasting than the productions of far 
less splendid epochs. And this prematureness comes 
from its having proceeded without having its proper 
5 data, without sufficient materials to work with. In 
other words, the English poetry of the first quarter of 
this century, with plenty of energy, plenty of creative 
force, did not know enough. This makes Byron so 
empty of matter, Shelley so incoherent, Wordsworth 

10 even, profound as he is, yet so wanting in complete- 
ness and variety. Wordsworth cared little for books, 
and disparaged Goethe. I admire Wordsworth, as he 
is, so much that I cannot wish him different ; and it is 
vain, no doubt, to imagine such a man different from 

15 what he is, to suppose that he could have been differ- 
ent. But surely the one thing wanting to make 
Wordsworth an even greater poet than he is, — his 
thought richer, and his influence of wider applica- 
tion, — was that he should have read more books, 

20 among them, no doubt, those of that Goethe whom he 
disparaged without reading him. 

But to speak of books and reading may easily lead 
to a misunderstanding here. It was not really books 
and reading that lacked to our poetry at this epoch ; 

25 Shelley had plenty of reading, Coleridge had immense 
reading. Pindar and Sophocles — as we all say so 
glibly, and often with so little discernment of the real 
import of what we are saying — had not many books ; 
Shakspeare was no deep reader. True ; but in the 

30 Greece of Pindar and Sophocles, in the England of 
Shakspeare, the poet lived in a current of ideas in the 
highest degree animating and nourishing to the crea- 



8 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

tive power ; society was, in the fullest measure, 
permeated by fresh thought, intelligent and alive. 
And this state of things is the true basis for the crea- 
tive power's exercise, in this it finds its data, its 
materials, truly ready for its hand ; all the books and 5 
reading in the world are only valuable as they are 
helps to this. Even when this does not actually 
exist, books and reading may enable a man to con- 
struct a kind of semblance of it in his own mind, a 
world of knowledge and intelligence in which he may 10 
live and work. This is by no means an equivalent to 
the artist for the nationally diffused life and thought 
of the epochs of Sophocles or Shakspeare ; but, be- 
sides that it may be a means of preparation for such 
epochs, it does really constitute, if many share in it, a 15 
quickening and sustaining atmosphere of great value. 
Such an atmosphere the many-sided learning and the 
long and widely-combined critical effort of Germany 
formed for Goethe^ wjien he lived and worked. There 
was no national glow of life an d Jhouglitjjiere as in the 20 
Athens of Pericles o r the England o f Elizabeth. That 
TVSs the poet's weakness. But there was^a sort of 
equivalent for it in the complete culture and unfettered 
thinking of a large body of Germans, That was his 
strength. Ip^tlie JEn gland of the first quarter of this^25 
century t here wasjieither a national glow of life and 
thought , such as we had in the age of Elizabeth, nor 
yet a culture and a force of learning and criticism __ 
such as were to be found in Germany. ^Therefore the 
creative power of poetnT^wahled, for success in the 30 
highest sense, materials and a basis ; a thorough in- 
terpretation of the world was necessarily denied to it. 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 9 

At first sight it seems strange that out of the im- 
mense stir of the French Revolution and its age 
should not have come a crop of works of genius equal 
to that which came out of the stir of the great produc- 
5 tive time of Greece, or out of that of the Renascence, 
with its powerful episode the Reformation. But the 
truth is that the stir of the French Revolution took a 
character which essentially distinguished it from such 
movements as these. These were, in the main, disin- 

10 terestedly intellectual and spiritual movements ; 
movements in which the human spirit looked for its 
satisfaction in itself and in the increased play of its 
own activity. The French Revolution took a politi- 
cal, practical character. The movement which went 

15 on in France under the old regime, from 1700 to 1789, 
was far more really akin than that of the Revolution 
itself to the movement of the Renascence ; the France 
of Voltaire and Rousseau told far more powerfully 
upon the mind of Europe than the France of the 

20 Revolution. Goethe reproached this last expressly 
with having " thrown quiet culture back." Nay, and 
the true key to how much in our Byron, even in our 
Wordsworth, is this ! — that they had their source in a 
great movement of feeling, not in a great movement of 

25 mind. The French Revolution, however, — that object 
of so much blind love and so much blind hatred, — 
found undoubtedly its motive-power in the intelligence 
of men, and not in their practical sense ; this is what 
distinguishes it from the English Revolution of Charles 

30 the First's time. This is what makes it a more spirit- 
ual event than our Revolution, an event of much more 
powerful and world-wide interest, though practically 



lo THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

less successful ; it appeals to an order of ideas which 
are universal, certain, permanent. 1789 asked of a 
thing, Is it rational ? 1642 asked of a thing, Is it 
legal ? or, when it went furthest. Is it according to 
conscience ? This is the English fashion, a fashion to 5 
be treated, within its own sphere, with the highest 
respect ; for its success, within its own sphere, has been 
prodigious. But what is law in one place is not law 
in another, what is law here to-day is not law even 
here to-morrow ; and as for conscience, what is bind- 10 
ing on one man's conscience is not binding on 
another's. The old woman who threw her stool at the 
head of the surpliced minister in St. Giles's Church at 
Edinburgh obeyed an impulse to which millions of 
the human race may be permitted to remain strangers. 15 
But the prescriptions of reason are absolute, unchang- 
ing, of universal validity ; to count by tens is the easiest 
way of counting — that is a proposition of which every 
one, from here to the Antipodes, feels the force ; at 
least I should say so if we did not live in a country 20 
where it is not impossible that any morning we may 
find a letter in the Times declaring that a decimal 
coinage is an absurdity. That a whole nation should 
have been penetrated with an enthusiasm for pure 
reason, and with an ardent zeal for making its pre- 25 
scriptions triumph, is a very remarkable thing, when 
we consider how little of mind, or anything so worthy 
and quickening as mind, comes into the motives 
which alone, in general, impel great masses of men. 
In spite of the extravagant direction given to this 30 
enthusiasm, in spite of the crimes and follies in which 
it lost itself, the French Revolution derives from the 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. II 

force, truth, and universality of the ideas which it 
took for its law, and from the passion with which it 
could inspire a multitude for these ideas, a unique and 
still living power ; it is — it will probably long remain — 
5 the greatest, the most animating event in history. And 
as no sincere passion for the things of the mind, even 
though it turn out in many respects an unfortunate 
passion, is ever quite thrown away and quite barren of 
good, France has reaped from hers one fruit — the 

lo natural and legitimate fruit, though not precisely the 
grand fruit she expected : she is the country in Europe 
where the people is most alive. 

But the mania for giving an immediate political and 
practical application to all these fine ideas of the rea- 

15 son was fatal. Here an Englishman is in his element : 
on this theme we can all go on for hours. And all 
we are in the habit of saying on it has undoubtedly a 
great deal of truth. Ideas cannot be too much prized 
in and for themselves, cannot be too much lived with ; 

20 but to transport them abruptly into the world of poli- 
tics and practice, violently to revolutionise this world 
to their bidding, — that is quite another thing. There 
is the world of ideas and there is the world of practice ; 
the French are often for suppressing the one, and the 

25 English the other ; but neither is to be suppressed. A 
member of the House of Commons said to me tlie 
other day : *' That a thing is an anomaly, I consider 
to be no objection to it whatever.'' I venture to think 
he was wrong ; that a thing is an anomaly is an objec- 

30 tion to it, but absolutely and in the sphere of ideas : it 
is not necessarily, under such and such circumstances, 
or at such and such a moment, an objection to it in 



12 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

the sphere of politics and practice. Joubert has said 
beautifully : " C'est la force et le droit qui reglent 
toutes choses dans le monde ; la force en attendant le 
droit." (Force and right are the governors of this 
world ; force till right is ready.) Force till right is 5 
ready; and till right is ready, force, the existing order 
of things, is justified, is the legitimate ruler. But 
right is something moral, and implies inward recogni- 
tion, free assent of the will ; we are not ready for 
right, — right, so far as we are concerned, is not ready, — 10 
until we have attained this sense of seeing it and will- 
ing it. The way in which for us it may change and 
transform force, the existing order of things, and be- 
come, in its turn, the legitimate ruler of the world, 
should depend on the way in which, when our time 15 
comes, we see it and will it. Therefore for other peo- 
ple enamoured of their own newly discerned right, to 
attempt to impose it upon us as ours, and violently to 
substitute their right for our force, is an act of tyranny, 
and to be resisted. It sets at nought the second great 20 
half of our maxim, force till right is ready. This was 

the grand error of the French Rev olution : and i ts 

movement of ideas, by quittrng_the intf"llt"<"tiinl «;pK^4:e — 
and rushing furiously into the p olitical sphere, ran^ 

. mdJed^jLpiQjjigious^ndjiieiaQxalile- rourse,-Jbut-pfe— 25 
duced no such intellectual fruit as the^ movemeii^oF^ 
ideas of the Renascence, and created, in opposition to 

^tsdfj whal^^jinaj _call_aji_^^ The 

great force of that epoch of concentration was Eng- 
land ; and the great voice of that epoch of concentra- 30 

"trorr was Burke. It is the fashion to treat Burke's 
writings on the Frejach--JR.evoluiion as superannuated 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 13 

and conquered by the event ; as the eloquent but un- 
pFiIosophTcaTfrrades of bigotry and prejudice. I will 
not deny that they are often disfigured by the violence 
and passion of the moment, and that in some directions 
5 Burke's view was bounded, and his observation there- 
fore at fault. But on the whole, and for those who can 
make the needful corrections, what distinguishes these 
writings is their profound, permanent, fruitful, philo- 
sophical truth. They contain the true philosophy of 

lo an epoch of concentration, dissipate the heavy atmos- 
phere which its own nature is apt to engender round 
it, and make its resistance rational instead of 
mechanical. 

But Burke is so great because, almost alone in Eng- 

15 land, he brings thought to bear upon politics, he 
saturates politics with thought. It is his accident that 
his ideas were at the service of an epoch of concen- 
tration, not of an epoch of expansion ; it is his 
characteristic that he so lived by ideas, and had such 

20 a source of them welling up within him, that he could 
float even an epoch of concentration and English Tory 
politics with them. It does not hurt him that Dr. 
Price and the Liberals were enraged with him ; it 
does not even hurt him that George the Third and the 

25 Tories were enchanted with him. His greatness is 
that he lived in a world which neither English Liberal- 
ism nor English Toryism is apt to enter ; — the world of 
ideas, not the world of catchwords and party habits. 
So far is it from being really true of him that he " to 

30 party gave up what was meant for mankind," that at 
the very end of his fierce struggle with the French 
Revolution, after all his invectives against its false pre- 



14 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

tensions, hollowness, and madness, with his sincere 
conviction of its mischievousness, he can close a 
memorandum on the best means of combating it, some 
of the last pages he ever wrote, — the Thoughts on 
French Affairs^ in December, 1791, — with these strik- 5 
ing words : — 

" The evil is stated, in my opinion, as it exists. The 
remedy must be where power, wisdom, and informa- 
tion, I hope, are more united with good intentions than 
they can be with me. I have done with this subject, 1 10 
believe, for ever. It has given me many anxious 
moments for the last two years. If a great change is 
to be 7Jiade in human affairs^ the minds of men will be 
fitted to it J the general opinions and feelings will draw 
that 7V ay. Every fear ^ every hope will forward it j andi^ 
then they who persist in opposing this mighty current in 
human affairs, will appear rather to resist the decrees of 
Providence itself, than the mere designs of mett. They 
2vill not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obsti- 
nate y 20 

That return of Burke upon himself has always 
seemed to me one of the finest things in English 
literature, or indeed in any literature. That is what 
I call living by ideas : when one side of a question 
has long had your earnest support, when all your 25 
feelings are engaged, when you hear all round you no 
language but one, wlien your party talks this language 
like a steam-engine and can imagine no other, — still 
to be able to think, still to be irresistibly carried, if so 
it be, by the current of thought to the opposite side 30 
of the question, and, like Balaam, to be unable to 
speak anything but what the Lord has put in your mouth. 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 15 

I know nothing more striking, and I must add that I 
know nothing more un-English. 

For the Englishman in general is like my friend the 
Member of Parliament, and believes, point-blank, that 
5 for a thing to be an anomaly is absolutely no objec- 
tion to it whatever. He is like the Lord Auckland 
of Burke's day, who, in a memorandum on the French 
Revolution, talks of '' certain miscreants, assuming 
the name of philosophers, who have presumed them- 

10 selves capable of establishing a new system of society." 
The Englishman has been called a political animal, 
and he values what is political and practical so much 
that ideas easily become objects of dislike in his eyes, 
and thinkers ''miscreants," because ideas and thinkers 

15 have rashly meddled with politics and practice. This 
would be all very well if the dislike and neglect con- 
fined themselves to ideas transported out of their own 
sphere, and meddling rashly with practice ; but they 
are inevitably extended to ideas as such, and to the 

20 whole life of intelligence; practice is everything, a 
free play of the mind is nothing. The notion of the 
free play of the mind upon all subjects being a pleas- 
ure in itself, being an object of desire, being an essen- 
tial provider of elements without which a nation's 

25 spirit, whatever compensations it may have for them, 
must, in the long run, die of inanition, hardly enters 
into an Englishman's thoughts. LHsjioticeable t hat 
the word curiosity, which in other languages is us ed in 
a good sense, to mean, as a high and fine quality of 

30 marTs^nature, just this disinterested love of a free 
-ptajTof the mind on all subjects, for its own sake,— it 
is noticeable, I say, that this word has in our language 



1 6 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

no sense of the kind, no sense but a rather bad and 
disparaging one. But criticism, real criticism, is 
essentially the exercise of this very quality. It obeys 
an instinct promp ti ng it to try to know t |ii_±t£st-4ba;t— 

""isTcnown and thought in the world, irrespectively of^ 
practice, poTTtics, arid everything of the kijid_;_and to 
value klTowtedge and'^Fhought as they approach this 
best, without the intrusion of any other considera- 
tions whatever. Thi s is an instinct for which there 
is, I think, little original sympathy in THe~^>acticaT'io 

^ETTglisn' iiaTufe,^nd wTiat there was of it TTas under- 
"gone a long benumbing period of blight and suppres- 
sion in the epoch of concentration which followed fhe 
French Revolution. 

But epochs of concentration cannot well endure 15 
for ever ; epochs of expansion, in the due course of 
things, follow them. Such an epoch of expansion 
seems to be opening in this country. In the first 
place all danger of a hostile forcible pressure of foreign 
ideas upon our practice has long disappeared; like 20 
the traveller in the fable, therefore, we begin to wear 
our cloak a little more loosely. Then, with a long 

peace, the ideas of Europe steal gradually and ami^ 

cably in, and mingle, though in infinitesimally small , 

'^uahTrtres~irt aT' tfme^ with our own notions. Then, 25 

Too7Tn~spire"oT~amhat is said about the absorbing 
and brutalising influence of our passionate material 
progress, it seems to me indisputable that this progress 
is likely, though not certain, to lead in the end to an 
apparition of intellectual life ; and that man, after he 30 
has made himself perfectly comfortable and has now 
to determine what to do with himself next, may begin 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 17 

to remember that he has a mind, and that the mind 
may be made the source of great pleasure. I grant it 
is mainly the privilege of faith, at present, to discern 
this end to our railways, our business, and our fortune- 

5 making ; but we shall see if, here as elsewhere, faith 
is not in the end the true prophet. Our ease, our 
travelling, and our unbounded liberty to hold just as 
hard and securely as we please to the practice to which 
our notions have given birth, all tend to beget an 

10 inclination to deal a little more freely with these 
notions themselves, to canvass them a little, to pene- 
trate a little into their real nature. Flutterings of 
curiosity, in the foreign sense of the word, appear 
amongst us, and it is in these that criticism must look 

15 to find its account. Criticism first ; a time of true 
creative activity, perhaps, — which, as I have said, must 
inevitably be preceded amongst us by a time of criti- 
cism, — hereafter, when criticism has done its work. 
It is of the last importance that English criticism 

20 should clearly discern what rule for its course, in 
order to avail itself of the field now opening to it, and 
to produce fruit for the future, it ought to take. The 
rule mn y he <;nm PT^d np in OllgJ^^I^^j^ZZ^^^'"/'^^,^:^^^!^!!^!^^ 
And how is criticism to show disinterestedness ? By 

25 keepinsL-aloof-i rom what is called ]'' t he pract ical view — ^ 
oft hings "; byj resolutely following the l.aw^Us_owri_ 
nat ure, which is to be a Tree play of the min d on all^ 

"suBjects which it toucTie s. By steadily refusing to 

lend itself to any of those ulterior, political, practLaal ._ _ 

3oconside rations about ideas, which plenty of peopj e 
will^be~sirre~to aftachntd'lhem, whiclf perhaps ough t 
often to be attached to them, which in this country at 



1 8 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

any rate are certain to be attached to them quite 
sufficiently, but which criticism has really nothing to 
do with. Its business is, as I have said, simply to 
know the best that is known and thought in the 



worl d, and by in its turn making this known, t o create 5 
a current of true and fresh ideas. j;ts business is to 
do this with inflexible honesty, with due ability ; but 
its business is to do no more, and to leave alone all 
questions of practical consequences and applications, 
questions which will never fail to have due prominence 10 
given to them. Else criticism, besides being really 
false to its own nature, merely continues in the old 
rut which it has hitherto followed in this country, and 
will certainly miss the chance now given to it. For 
what is at present the bane of criticism in this country ? 15 
It is that practical considerations cling to it and stifle 
it. It subserves interests not its own. Our organs of 
criticism are organs of men and parties having practi- 
cal ends to serve, and with them those practical ends 
are the first thing and the play of mind the second ; 20 
so much play of mind as is compatible with the prose- 
cution of those practical ends is all that is wanted. 
An organ like the Revue des Deux Mojides^ having for 
its main function to understand and utter the best 
that is known and thought in the world, existing, it 25 
may be said, as just an organ for a free play of the 
mind, we have not. But we have the Edinburgh 
Review^ existing as an organ of the old Whigs, and 
for as much play of the mind as may suit its being 
that ; we have the Quarterly Review^ existing as an 30 
organ of the Tories, and for as much play of mind as 
may suit its being that ; we have the British Quarterly 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 19 

Review^ existing as an organ of the political Dissenters, 
and for as much play of mind as may suit its being 
that ; we have the Times, existing as an organ of the 
common, satisfied, well-to-do Englishman, and for as 
5 much play of mind as may suit its being that. And 
so on through all the various fractions, political and 
religious, of our society ; every fraction has, as such, 
its organ of criticism, but the notion of combining all 
fractions in the common pleasure of a free disinter- 

loested play of mind meets with no favour. Directly 
this play of mind wants to have more scope, and to 
forget the pressure of practical considerations a little, 
it is checked, it is made to feel the chain. We saw 
this the other day in the extinction, so much to be 

15 regretted, of the Home and Foreign Review. Perhaps 
in no organ of criticism in this country was there so 
much knowledge, so much play of mind ; but these 
could not save it. The Dublin Review subordinates 
play of mind to the practical business of English and 

20 Irish Catholicism, and lives. It must needs be that 
men should act in sects and parties, that each of these 
sects and parties should have its organ, and should 
make this organ subserve the interests of its action ; 
but it would be well, too, that there should be a 

25 criticism, not the minister of these interests, not their 
enemy, but absolutely and entirely independent of 
them. No other criticism will ever attain any real 
authority or make any real way towards its end, — the 
creating a current of true and fresh ideas. 

30 It is because criticism has so little kept in the pure 
intellectual sphere, has so little detached itself from 
practice, has been so directly polemical and contro- 



20 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

versial, that it has so ill accomplished, in this country, 
its best spiritual work ; which is to keep man from a 
self-satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarising, to 
lead him towards perfection, by making his mind 
dwell upon what is excellent in itself, and the abso- 5 
lute beauty and fitness of things. A polemical prac- 
tical criticism makes men blind even to the ideal 
perfection of their practice, makes them willingly 
assert its ideal perfection, in order the better to secure 
it against attack ; and clearly this is narrowing and lo 
baneful for them. If they were reassured on the 
practical side, speculative considerations of ideal 
perfection they might be brought to entertain, and 
their spiritual horizon would thus gradually widen. 
Sir Charles Adderley says to the Warwickshire 15 
farmers :— 

'' Talk of the improvement of breed ! Why, the 
race we ourselves represent, the men and women, 
the old Anglo-Saxon race, are the best breed in the 
whole world. . . . The absence of a too enervating 20 
climate, too unclouded skies, and a too luxurious 
nature, has produced so vigorous a race of people, and 
has rendered us so superior to all the world." 

Mr. Roebuck says to the Sheffield cutlers : — 

" I look around me and ask what is the state of 25 
England ? Is not property safe ? Is not every man 
able to say what he likes ? Can you not walk from 
one end of England to the other in perfect security ? 
I ask you whether, the world over or in past history, 
there is anything like it ? Nothing. I pray that our 30 
unrivalled happiness may last." 

Now obviously there is a peril for poor human 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 21 

nature in words and thoughts of such exuberant self- 
satisfaction, until we find ourselves safe in the streets 
of the Celestial City. 

" Das wenige verscliwindet leicht dem Blicke 
5 Der vorwarts sieht, wie viel noch ubrig bleibt — " 

says Goethe ; " the little that is done seems nothing 
when we look forward and see how much we have yet 
to do." Clearly this is a better line of reflection for 
weak humanity, so long as it remains on this earthly 

10 field of labour and trial. 

But neither Sir Charles Adderley nor Mr. Roebuck 
is by nature inaccessible to considerations of this sort. 
They only lose sight of them owing to the controver- 
sial life we all lead, and the practical form which all 

15 speculation takes with us. They have in view oppo- 
nents whose aim is not ideal, but practical ; and in 
their zeal to uphold their own practice against these 
innovators, they go so far as even to attribute to this 
practice an ideal perfection. Somebody has been 

20 wanting to intro(Juce a six-pound franchise, or to 
abolish church-rates, or to collect agricultural statistics 
by force, or to diminish local self-government. How 
natural, in reply to such proposals, very likely im- 
proper or ill-timed, to go a little beyond the mark, 

25 and to say stoutly, " Such a race of people as we 
stand, so superior to all the world ! The old Anglo- 
Saxon race, the best breed in the whole world ! I 
pray that our unrivalled happiness may last ! I ask 
you whether, the world over or in past history, there 

30 is anything like it?" And so long as criticism 
answers this dithyramb by insisting that the old 



22 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

Anglo-Saxon race would be still more superior to all 
others if it had no church-rates, or that our unrivalled 
happiness would last yet longer with a six-pound 
franchise, so long will the strain, " The best breed in 
the whole world ! " swell louder and 4ouder, every- 5 
thing ideal and refining will be lost out of sight, and 
both the assailed and their critics will remain in a 
sphere, to say the truth, perfectly unvital, a sphere in 
which spiritual progression is impossible. But let 
criticism leave church-rates and the franchise alone, 10 
and in the most candid spirit, without a single lurking 
thought of practical innovation, confront with our 
dithyramb this paragraph on which I stumbled in a 
newspaper immediately after reading Mr. Roebuck : — 

"A shocking child murder has just been committed 15 
at Nottingham. A girl named Wragg left the work- 
house there on Saturday morning with her young 
illegitimate child. The child was soon afterwards 
found dead on Mapperly Hills, having been strangled. 
Wragg is in custody." 20 

Nothing but that ; but, in juxtaposition with the 
absolute eulogies of Sir Charles Adderley and Mr. 
Roebuck, how eloquent, how suggestive are those 
few lines ! *' Our old Anglo-Saxon breed, the best in 
the whole world ! " — how much that is harsh and ill- 25 
favoured there is in this best ! Wragg ! If we are 
to talk of ideal perfection, of " the best in the whole 
world," has any one reflected what a touch of gross- 
ness in our race, what an original shortcoming in the 
more delicate spiritual perceptions, is shown by the 30 
natural growth amongst us of such hideous names, — 
Higginbottom, Stiggins, Bugg ! In Ionia and Attica 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 23 

they were luckier in this respect than " the best race 
in the world "; by the Ilissus there was no Wragg, 
poor thing ! And *' our unrivalled happiness "; — 
what an element of grimness, bareness, and hideous- 
5 ness mixes with it and blurs it ; the workhouse, the 
dismal Mapperly Hills, — how dismal those who have 
seen them will remember ; — the gloom, the smoke, 
the cold, the strangled illegitimate child ! " I ask 
you whether, the world over or in past history, there 

10 is anything like it ? " Perhaps not, one is inclined to 
answer ; biut at any rate, in that case, the world is 
very much to be pitied. And the final touch, — short, 
bleak, and inhuman : Wragg is in custody. The sex 
lost in the confusion of our unrivalled happiness ; or 

15 (shall I say ?) the superfluous Christian name lopped off 
by the straightforward vigour of our old Anglo-Saxon 
breed ! There is profit for the spirit in such con- 
trasts as this ; criticism serves the cause of perfection 
by establishing them. By eluding sterile conflict, by 

20 refusing to remain in the sphere where alone narrow 
and relative conceptions have any worth and validity, 
criticism may diminish its momentary importance, but 
only in this way has it a chance of gaining admittance 
for those wider and more perfect conceptions to which 

25 all its duty is really owed. Mr. Roebuck will have a 
poor opinion of an adversary who replies to his defiant 
songs of triumph only by murmuring under his breath, 
Wragg is in custody j but in no other way will these 
songs of triumph be induced gradually to moderate 

30 themselves, to get rid of what in them is excessive 

and offensive, and to fall into a softer and truer key. 

It will be said that it is a very subtle and indirect 



24 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

action which I am thus prescribing for criticism, and 
that, by embracing in this manner the Indian virtue 
of detachment and abandoning the sphere of practical 
life, it condemns itself to a slow and obscure work. 
Slow and obscure it may be, but it is the only proper 5 
work of criticism. The mass of mankind will never 
have any ardent zeal for seeing things as they are ; 
very inadequate ideas will always satisfy them. On 
these inadequate ideas reposes, and must repose, the 
general practice of the world. That is as much as 10 
saying that whoever sets himself to see things as they 
are will find himself one of a very small circle ; but 
it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own 
work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all. 
The rush and roar of practical life will always have a 15 
dizzying and attracting effect upon the most collected 
spectator, and tend to draw him into its vortex ; 
most of all will this be the case where that life is so 
powerful as it is in England. But it is only by re- 
maining collected, and refusing to lend himself to the 20 
point of view of the practical man, that the critic can 
do the practical man any service ; and it is only by 
the greatest sincerity in pursuing his own course, and 
by at last convincing even the practical man of his 
sincerity, that he can escape misunderstandings which 25 
perpetually threaten him. 

For the practical man is not apt for fine distinc- 
tions, and yet in these distinctions truth and the 
highest culture greatly find their account. But it is 
not easy to lead a practical man, — unless you reassures© 
him as to your practical intentions, you have no 
chance of leading him, — to see that a thing which he 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 25 

has always been used to look at from one side only, 
which he greatly values, and which, looked at from 
that side, quite deserves, perhaps, all the prizing and 
admiring which he bestows upon it, — that this thing, 
5 looked at from another side, may appear much less 
beneficent and beautiful, and yet retain all its claims 
to our practical allegiance. Where shall we find 
language innocent enougli, how shall we make the 
spotless purity of our intentions evident enough, to 

10 enable us to say to the political Englishman that the 
British Constitution itself, which, seen from the prac- 
tical side, looks such a magnificent organ of progress 
and virtue, seen from the speculative side, — with its 
compromises, its love of facts, its horror of theory, its 

15 studied avoidance of clear thoughts, — that, seen from 
this side, our august Constitution sometimes looks, — 
forgive me, shade of Lord Somers! — a colossal machine 
for the manufacture of Philistines? How is Cobbett 
to say this and not be misunderstood, blackened as he 

20 is with the smoke of a lifelong conflict in the field of 
political practice ? how is Mr. Carlyle to say it and 
not be misunderstood, after his furious raid into this 
field with his Latter-day Pamphlets? how is Mr. 
Ruskin, after his pugnacious political economy ? I 

25 say, the critic must keep out of the region of immedi- 
ate practice in the political, social, humanitarian sphere, 
if he wants to make a beginning for that more free 
speculative treatment of things, which may perhaps 
one day make its benefits felt even in this sphere, but 

30 in a natural and thence irresistible manner. 

Do what he will, however, the critic will still remain 
exposed to frequent misunderstandings, and nowhere 



26 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

SO much as in this country. For here people are par- 
ticularly indisposed even to comprehend that without 
this free disinterested treatment of things, truth and 
the highest culture are out of the question. So 
immersed are they in practical life, so accustomed to 5 
take all their notions from this life and its processes, 
that they are apt to think that truth and culture them- 
selves can be reached by the processes of this life, 
and that it is an impertinent sigularity to think of 
reaching them in any other. "We are all terrce filiiy* lo 
cries their eloquent advocate; " all Philistines together. 
Away with the notion of proceeding by any other 
course than the course dear to the Philistines ; let us 
have a social movement, let us organise and combine 
a party to pursue truth and new thought, let us call it 15 
the liberal party ^ and let us all stick to each other, and 
back each other up. Let us have no nonsense about . 
independent criticism, and intellectual delicacy, and 
the few and the many. Don't let us trouble ourselves 
about foreign thought; we shall invent the whole 20 
thing for ourselves as we go along. If one of us 
speaks well, applaud him ; if one of us speaks ill, 
applaud him too ; we are all in the same movement, 
we are all liberals, we are all in pursuit of truth." 
In this way the pursuit of truth becomes really a 25 
social, practical, pleasurable affair, almost requiring a 
chairman, a secretary, and advertisements ; with the 
excitement of an occasional scandal, with a little 
resistance to give the happy sense of difficulty over- 
come; but, in general, plenty of bustle and very little 30 
thought. To act is so easy, as Goethe says ; to think 
is so hard ! It is true that the critic has many temp- 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 27 

tations to go with the stream, to make one of the 
party movement, one of these terrce filii ; it seems 
ungracious to refuse to be a terrce filius^ when so 
many excellent people are ; but the critic's duty is to 
5 refuse, or, if resistance is vain, at least to cry with 
Obermann : Perissons eft resistant. 

How serious a matter it is to try and resist, I had 
ample opportunity of experiencing when I ventured 
some time ago to criticise the celebrated first volume 

10 of Bishop Colenso/ The echoes of the storm which 
was then raised I still, from time to time, hear grum- 
bling round me. That storm arose out of a misunder- 
standing almost inevitable. It is a result of no little 
culture to attain to a clear perception that science and 

15 religion are two wholly different things. The multi- 
tude will for ever confuse them ; but happily that is 
of no great real importance, for while the multitude 
imagines itself to live by its false science, it does 
really live by its true religion. Dr. Colenso, how- 

20 ever, in his first volume did all he could to strengthen 
the confusion,^ and to make it dangerous. He did this 

^ So sincere is my dislike to all personal attack and contro- 
versy, that I abstain from reprinting, at this distance of time from 
the occasion which called them forth, the essays in which I criti- 
cised Dr. Colenso's book; I feel bound, however, after all that has 
passed, to make here a final declaration of my sincere impenitence 
for having published them. Nay, I cannot forbear repeating yet 
once more, for his benefit and that of his readers, this sentence 
from my original remarks upon him : There is truth of science 
and truth of religion; truth of science does not become truth of 
religion till it is made religious. And I will add : Let us have all 
the science there is from the men of science ; from the men of 
religion let us have religion. 

- It has been said I make it " a crime against literary criticism 



28 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

with the best intentions, I freely admit, and with the 
most candid ignorance that this was the natural effect 
of what he was doing ; but, says Joubert, " Ignorance, 
which in matters of morals extenuates the crime, is 
itself, in intellectual matters, a crime of the first order." 5 
I criticised Bishop Colenso's speculative confusion. 
Immediately there was a cry raised: ''What is this? 
here is a liberal attacking a liberal. Do not you 
belong to the movement ? are not you a friend of 
truth ? Is not Bishop Colenso in search of truth ? lo 
then speak with proper respect of his book. Dr. 
Stanley is another friend of truth, and you speak with 
proper respect of his book ; why make these invidious 
differences? both books are excellent, admirable, lib- 
eral ; Bishop Colenso's perhaps the most so, because 15 
it is tlie boldest, and will have the best practical con- 
sequences for the liberal cause. Do you want to 
encourage to the attack of a brother liberal his, and 
your, and our implacable enemies, the Church and 
State Revie7v or the J^ecord, — the High Church rhi- 20 
noceros and the Evangelical hy^na? Be silent, there- 
fore ; or rather speak, speak as loud as ever you can ! 
and go into ecstasies over the eighty and odd pigeons." 
But criticism cannot follow this coarse and indis- 
criminate method. It is unfortunately possible for a 25 
man in pursuit of truth to write a book which reposes 
upon a false conception. Even the practical conse- 
quences of a book are to genuine criticism no recom- 
mendation of it, if the book is, in the highest sense, 

and the higher culture to attempt to inform the ignorant." Need 
I point out that the ignorant are not informed by being confirmed 
in a confusion ? 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 29 

blundering. I see that a lady who herself,, too, is in 
pursuit of truth, and who writes with great ability, 
but a little too much, perhaps, under the influence of 
the practical spirit of the English liberal movement, 

5 classes Bishop Colenso's book and M. Kenan's 
together, in her survey of the religious state of 
Europe, as facts of the same order, works, both of 
them, of "great importance"; "great ability, power, 
and skiir'; Bishop Colenso's, perhaps, the most 

10 powerful ; at least. Miss Cobbe gives special expres- 
sion to her gratitude that to Bishop Colenso " has 
been given the strength to grasp, and the courage to 
teach, truths of such deep import." In the same 
way, more than one popular writer has compared him 

15 to Luther. Now it is just this kind of false estimate 
which the critical spirit is, it seems to me, bound to 
resist. It is really the strongest possible proof of the 
low ebb at which, in England, the critical spirit is, 
that while the critical hit in the religious literature 

20 of Germany is Dr. Strauss's book, in that of France 
M. Kenan's book, the book of Bishop Colenso is the 
critical hit in the religious literature of England. 
Bishop Colenso's book reposes on a total misconcep- 
tion of the essential elements of the religious problem, 

25 as that problem is now presented for solution. To 
criticism, therefore, which seeks to have the best that 
is known and thought on this problem, it is, however 
well meant, of no importance whatever. M. Kenan's 
book attempts a new synthesis of the elements 

30 furnished to us by the Four Gospels. It attempts, 
in my opinion, a synthesis, perhaps premature, per- 
haps impossible, certainly not successful. Up to the 



30 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

present time, at any rate, we must acquiesce in 
Fleury's sentence on such recastings of the Gospel- 
story : Quiconque s'ittiagine la pouvoir mieux 'ecrire^ 
ne Veiitend pas. M. Renan had himself passed by 
anticipation a like sentence on his own work, when 5 
he said : " If a new presentation of the character of 
Jesus were offered to me, I would not have it ; its 
very clearness would be, in my opinion, the best 
proof of its insufficiency." His friends may with 
perfect justice rejoin that at the sight of the Holy 10 
Land, and of the actual scene of the Gospel-story, 
all the current of M. Renan's thoughts may have 
naturally changed, and a new casting of that story 
irresistibly suggested itself to him ; and that this is 
just a case for applying Cicero's maxim : Change of 15 
mind is not inconsistency — 7ie)no doctiis iDiquam muta- 
tioiiem consilii inconstantiajn dixit esse. Nevertheless, 
for criticism, M. Renan's first thought must still be 
the truer one, as long as his new casting so fails more 
fully to commend itself, more fully (to use Coleridge's 20 
happy phrase about the Bible) to find us. Still 
M. Renan's attempt is, for criticism, of the most real 
interest and importance, since, with all its difficulty, 
a fresh synthesis of the New Testament data, — not a 
making war on them, in Voltaire's fashion, not 325 
leaving them out of mind, in the world's fashion, but 
the putting a new construction upon them, the taking 
them from under the old, traditional, conventional 
point of view and placing them under a new one, — 
is the very essence of the religious problem, as now 30 
presented ; and only by efforts in this direction can 
it receive a solution. 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 3 1 

Again, in the same spirit in which she judges 
Bishop Colenso, Miss Cobbe, like so many earnest 
liberals of our practical race, both here and in 
America, herself sets vigorously about a positive 
5 reconstruction of religion, about making a religion 
of the future out of hand, or at least setting about 
making it. We must not rest, she and they are 
always thinking and saying, in negative criticism, we 
must be creative and constructive ; hence we have 

10 such works as her recent Religious Duty, and works 
still more considerable, perhaps, by others, which will 
be in every one's mind. These works often have 
much ability ; they often spring out of sincere con- 
victions, and a sincere wish to do good ; and they 

15 sometimes, perhaps, do good. Their fault is (if I 
may be permitted to say so) one which they have in 
common with the British College of Health, in the 
New Road. Every one knows the British College of 
Health ; it is that building with the lion and the 

20 statue of the Goddess Hygeia before it ; at least 
I am sure about the lion, though I am not absolutely 
certain about the Goddess Hygeia. This building 
does credit, perhaps, to the resources of Dr. Morrison 
and his disciples ; but it falls a good deal short of 

25 one's idea of what a British College of Health ought 
to be. In England, where we hate public inter- 
ference and love individual enterprise, we have a 
whole crop of places like the British College of 
Health ; the grand name without the grand thing. 

30 Unluckily, creditable to individual enterprise as they 
are, they tend to impair our taste by making us for- 
get what more grandiose, noble, or beautiful character 



32 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

properly belongs to a public institution. The same 
may be said of the religions of the future of Miss 
Cobbe and others. Creditable, like the British Col- 
lege of Health, to the resources of their authors, they 
yet tend to make us forget what more grandiose, 5 
noble, or beautiful character properly belongs to 
religious constructions. The historic religions, with 
all their faults, have had this ; it certainly belongs 
to the religious sentiment, when it truly flowers, to 
have this ; and we impoverish our spirit if we allow lo 
a religion of the future without it. What then is the 
duty of criticism here ? To take the practical point 
of view, to applaud the liberal movement and all its 
works, — its New Road religions of the future into the 
bargain, — for their general utility's sake ? By no 15 
means ; but to be perpetually dissatisfied with these 
works, while they perpetually fall short of a high 
and perfect ideal. 

For criticism, these are elementary laws ; but they 
never can be popular, and in this country they have 20 
been very little followed, and one meets with immense 
obstacles in following tliem. That is a reason for 
asserting them again and again. Criticism must 
maintain its independence of the practical spirit and 
its aims. Even with well-meant efforts of the practi- 25 
cal spirit it must express dissatisfaction, if in the 
sphere of the ideal they seem impoverishing and 
limiting. It must not hurry on to the goal because 
of its practical importance. It must be patient, and 
know how to wait ; and flexible, and know how to 30 
attach itself to things and how to withdraw from 
them. It must be apt to study and praise elements 



AT THE T RE SENT TIME. 33 

that for the fulness of spiritual perfection are wanted, 
even though they belong to a power which in the 
practical sphere may be maleficent. It must be apt 
to discern the spiritual shortcomings or illusions of 
5 powers that in the practical sphere may be beneficent. 
And this without any notion of favouring or injur- 
ing, in the practical sphere, one power or tlie other ; 
without any notion of playing off, in this sphere, 
one power against the other. When one looks, for 

lo instance, at the English Divorce Court, — an institu- 
tion which perhaps has its practical conveniences, 
but which in the ideal sphere is so hideous ; an 
institution which neither makes divorce impossible 
nor makes it decent, which allows a man to get rid 

15 of his wife, or a wife of her husband, but makes them 
drag one another first, for the public edification, 
through a mire of unutterable infamy, — when one 
looks at this charming institution, I say, with its 
crowded trials, its newspaper reports, and its money 

20 compensations, this institution in which the gross 
unregenerate British Philistine has indeed stamped 
an image of himself, — one may be permitted to find 
the marriage theory of Catholicism refreshing and 
elevating. Or when Protestantism, in virtue of its 

25 supposed rational and intellectual origin, gives the 
law to criticism too magisterially, criticism may and 
must remind it that its pretensions, in this respect, are 
illusive and do it harm ; that the Reformation was a 
moral rather than an intellectual event ; that Luther's 

30 theory of grace no more exactly reflects the mind of 
the spirit than Bossuet's philosophy of history reflects 
it '» and that there is no more antecedent probability 



34 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

of the Bishop of Durham's stock of ideas being agree- 
able to perfect reason than of Pope Pius the Ninth's. 
But criticism will not on that account forget the 
achievements of Protestantism in the practical and 
moral sphere; nor that, even in the intellectuals 
sphere, Protestantism, though in a blind an4 stumb- 
ling manner, carried forward the Renascence, while 
Catholicism threw itself violently across its path. 

I lately heard a man of thought and energy contrast- 
ing the want of ardour and movement which he now lo 
found amongst young men in this country with what 
he remembered in his own youth, twenty years ago. 
" What reformers we were then ! " he exclaimed ; 
"what a zeal we had ! how we canvassed every insti- 
tution in Church and State, and were prepared to 15 
remodel them all on first principles ! '' He was 
inclined to regret, as a spiritual flagging, the lull which 
he saw. I am disposed rather to regard it as a pause 
in which the turn to a new mode of spiritual progress 
is being accomplished. Everything was long seen, by 20 
the young and ardent amongst us, in inseparable con- 
nection with politics and practical life. We have 
pretty well exhausted the benefits of seeing things in 
this connection, we have got all that can be got by so 
seeing them. Let us try a more disinterested mode of 25 
seeing them ; let us betake ourselves more to the 
serener life of the mind and spirit. This life, too, 
may have its excesses and dangers ; but they are not 
for us at present. Let us think of quietly enlarging 
our stock of true and fresh ideas, and not, as soon as 30 
we get an idea or half an idea, be running out with it 
into the street, and trying to make it rule there. Our 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 35 

ideas will, in the end, shape the world all the better 
for maturing a little. Perhaps in fifty years' time it 
will in the English House of Commons be an objec- 
tion to an institution that it is an anomaly, and my 
5 friend the Member of Parliament will shudder in his 
grave. But let us in the meanwhile rather endeavour 
that in twenty years' time it may, in English literature, 
be an objection to a proposition that it is absurd. 
That will be a change so vast, that the imagination 

lo almost fails to grasp it. Ab integro sceclonwi nascitur 
ordo. 

If I have insisted so much on the course which 
criticism must take where politics and religion are 
concerned, it is because, where these burning matters 

15 are in question, it is most likely to go astray. I 
have wished, above all, to insist on the attitude which 
criticism should adopt towards things in general ; on 
its right tone and temper of mind. But then comes 
another question as to the subject-matter which literary 

20 criticism should most seek. Here, in general, its 
course is determined for it by the idea which is the 
law of its being ; the idea of a disinterested endeavour 
to learn and propagate the best that is known and 
thought in the world, and thus to establish a current 

25 of fresh and true ideas. By the very nature of things, 
as England is not all the world, much of the best that 
is known and thought in tlie world cannot be of 
English growth, must be foreign ; by the nature of 
things, again, it is just this that we are least likely to 

30 know, while English thought is streaming in upon us 
from all sides, and takes excellent care that we shall 
not be ignorant of its existence. The English critic 



36 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

of literature, therefore, must dwell much on foreign 
thought, and with particular heed on any part of it, 
which, while significant and fruitful in itself, is for any 
reason specially likely to escape him. Again, judging 
is often spoken of as the critic's one 15iisiness, and so 5 
in some sense^U Is ; but the judgment wlych_aJmost___ 
insensibly formsjtselfin a fair and clear niind, along — 
with fresh knowledge, is the valuable one ; and thus 
knowledge, "and'~ever~Tfesh knowredgeJ~lnust be the 
critters great concern for hifnself. And it is by com- 10 
~municating fresh knowledge, and letting his own judg- 
ment pass along with it, — but insensibly, and in the 
second place, not the first, as a sort of companion and 
cKie, not as an abstract lawgiver, ^^that the critic will 
^generally do most good to his readers. Sometimes, 15 
no doubt, for the sake of establishing an author's place 
in literature, and his relation to a central standard 
(and if this is not done, how are we to get at our best 
in the world f) criticism may have to deal with a sub- 
ject-matter so familiar that fresh knowledge is out of 20 
the question, and then it must be all judgment ; an 
enunciation and detailed application of principles. 
Here the great safeguard is never to let oneself become 
abstract, always to retain an intimate and lively con- 
sciousness of the truth of what one is saying, and, the 25 
moment this fails us, to be sure that something is 
wrong. Still, under all circumstances, this mere judg- 
ment and application of principles is, in itself, not the 
most satisfactory work to the critic ; like mathematics, 
it is tautological, and cannot well give us, like fresh 30 
learning, the sense of creative activity. 

But stop, some one will say ; all this talk is of iiQ 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 37 

practical use to us whatever ; this criticism of yours 
is not what we have in our minds wlien we speak of 
criticism ; when we speak of critics and criticism, we 
mean critics and criticism of the current English 
5 literature of the day ; when you offer to tell criticism 
its function, it is to this criticism that we expect you 
to address yourself. I am sorry for it, for I am afraid 
I must disappoint these expectations. I am bound by 
my own definition of criticism : a disinterested endea- 

lo vour to learn and propagate the best that is known and 
thought in the world. How much of current English 
literature comes into this "best that is known and 
thought in the world ? " Not very much, I fear ; 
certainly less, at this moment, than of the current 

15 literature of France or Germany. Well, then, am I to 
alter my definition of criticism, in order to meet the 
requirements of a number of practising English critics, 
who, after all, are free in their choice of a business ? 
That would be making criticism lend itself just to one 

20 of those alien practical considerations, which, I have 
said, are so fatal to it. One may say, indeed, to those 
who have to deal with the mass — so much better dis- 
regarded — of current English literature, that they may 
at all events endeavour, in dealing with this, to try it, 

25 so far as they can, by the standard of the best that is 
known and thought in the world ; one may say, that 
to get anywhere near this standard, every critic should 
try and possess one great literature, at least, besides 
his own, and the more unlike his own, the better. 

30 But, after all, the criticism I am really concerned 
with, — the criticism which alone can much help us 
for the future, the criticism which, throughout Europe, 



38 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

is at the present day meant, when so much stress is 
laid on the importance of criticism and the critical 
spirit, — is a criticism tvhich regards Europe as being, 
for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great con- 
federation, bound to a joint action and Avorking to a 5 
common result ; and whose members have, for their 
proper outfit, a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and 
Eastern antiquity, and of one another. Special, local, 
and temporary advantages being put out of account, 
that modern nation will in the intellectual and spiritual 10 
sphere make most progress, which most thoroughly 
carries out this programme. And what is that but 
saying that we too, all of us, as individuals, the more 
thoroughly we carry it out, shall make the more 
progress ? 15 

There is so much inviting us ! — what are we to 
take ? what will nourish us in growth towards perfec- 
tion ? That is the question which, with the immense 
field of life and of literature lying before him, the critic 
has to answer; for himself first, and afterwards for 20 
others. In this idea of the critic's business the essays 
brought together in the following pages have had their 
origin ; in this idea, widely different as are their sub- 
jects, they have, perhaps, their unity. 

I conclude with what I said at the beginning : to 25 
have the se nse nf rrg^vj^nr-tun'tj is the great happi- 
ness and the great proof of being alive, and it is not 
denied to criticism to liaye^iL; but then criticism rnus^ 
""^be^sincerersimple, fl exibl e, arde nt, ever wideni ng its_ 
knowledge. Then it may have, in no contemptible_3o 
^"measure, aJ^yfuLsense of_j:r eative a ctivity ; a sense 
which a man of insight and con tcience w ill prefer t o 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 39 

what he might derive from a p oor, starved, fra gmen- 



^^^iary, inad equate creation. _An d at some epochs no 
other creation isjio^ssihle. ..^ 

Still, i n full measur e, the sense of crea t ive activity 
sb elongs only to genuin_e _£reatinrt • in literature we 
must never forget that. But what true man of letters 
ever can forget it ? It is no such common matter for 
a gifted nature to come into possession of a current 
of true and living ideas, and to produce amidst the 

lo inspiration of them, that we are likely to underrate it. 
The epochs of ^schylus and Shakspeare make us 
feel their pre-eminence. In an epoch like those is, no 
doubt, the true life of literature ; there is the promised 
land, towards which criticism can only beckon. That 

15 promised land it will not be ours to enter, and we 
shall die in the wilderness ; but to have desired to 
enter it, to have saluted it from afar, is already, per- 
haps, the best distinction among contemporaries ; it 
will certainly be the best title to esteem with pos- 
terity. — Essays, I., ed. 1896, pp. 1-41. 



J^/e-tf<^ - ^^" 



aX^ J2^ 




©n ITranelatincj Ibomer. 

. . . Nunquamne reponam ? 

It has more than once been suggested to me that I 
should translate Homer. That is a task for which I 
have neither the time nor the courage ; but the sug- 
gestion led me to regard yet more closely a poet whom 
I had already long studied, and for one or two years 5 
the works of Homer were seldom out of my hands. 
The study of classical literature is probably on the 
decline ; but, whatever may be the fate of this study 
in general, it is certain that, as instruction spreads and 
the number of readers increases, attention will be lo 
more and more directed to the poetry of Homer, not 
indeed as part of a classical course, but as the most 
important poetical monument existing. Even within 
the last ten years two fresh translations of the Iliad 
have appeared in England : one by a man of great 15 
ability and genuine learning, Professor Newman ; the 
other by Mr. Wright, the conscientious and painstak- 
ing translator of Dante. It may safely be asserted 
that neither of these works will take rank as the 
standard translation of Homer; that the task of 20 
rendering him will still be attempted by other trans- 
lators. It may perhaps be possible to render to these 
some service, to save them some loss of labour, by 
pointing out rocks on which their predecessors have 



ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 41 

split, and the right objects on which a translator of 
Homer should fix his attention. 

It is disputed what aim a translator should propose 
to himself in dealing with his original. Even this 
5 preliminary is not yet settled. On one side it is said 
that the translation ought to be such " that the reader 
should, if possible, forget that it is a translation at all, 
and be lulled into the illusion that he is reading an 
original work — something original " (if the translation 

10 be in English), "from an English hand." The real 
original is in this case, it is said, " taken as a basis on 
which to rear a poem that shall affect our countrymen 
as the original may be conceived to have affected its 
natural hearers." On the other hand, Mr. Newman, 

15 who states the foregoing doctrine only to condemn it, 
declares that he " aims at precisely the opposite: to 
retain every peculiarity of the original, so far as he is 
able, with the greater care the more foreign it may 
happen to be "y so that it may " never be forgotten 

20 that he is imitating, and imitating in a different 
material." The translator's " first duty," says Mr. 
Newman, " is a historical one, to be faithful.'' 
Probably both sides would agree that the translator's 
"first duty is to be. faithful"; but the question at 

25 issue between them is, in what faithfulness consists. 
My one object is to give practical advice to a trans- 
lator ; and I shall not the least concern myself with 
theories of translation as such. But I advise the 
translator not to try "to rear on the basis of \\\q Iliad^ 

30 a poem that shall affect our countrymen as the 
original may be conceived to have affected its natural 
hearers "; and for this simple reason, that we cannot 



42 OiV TRANSLATIh^G HOMER. 

possibly tell how the Iliad ''affected its natural 
hearers." It is probably meant merely that he should 
try to affect Englishmen powerfully, as Homer affected 
Greeks powerfully ; but this direction is not enough, 
and can give no real guidance. For all great poets 5 
affect their hearers powerfully, but the effect of one 
poet is one thing, that of another poet another thing ; 
it is our translator's business to reproduce the effect 
of Homer, and the most powerful emotion of the 
unlearned English reader can never assure him lo 
whether he has reproduced this, or whether he has 
produced something else. So, again, he may follow 
Mr. Newman's directions, he may try to be ''faithful," 
he may " retain every peculiarity of his original "; 
but who is to assure him, who is to assure Mr. New- 15 
man himself, that, when he has done this, he has done 
that for which Mr. Newman enjoins this to be done, 
" adhered closely to Homer's manner and habit of 
thought"? Evidently the translator needs some more 
practical directions than these. No one can tell him 20 
how Homer affected the Greeks : but there are those 
who can tell him how Homer affects them. These are 
scholars ; who possess, at the same time with knowl- 
edge of Greek, adequate poetical taste and feeling. 
No translation will seem to them of much worth com- 25 
pared with the original ; but they alone can say 
whether the translation produces more or less the 
same effect upon them as the original. They are the 
only competent tribunal in this matter : the Greeks 
are dead ; the unlearned Englishman has not the data 30 
for judging ; and no man can safely confide in his 
own single judgment of his own work. Let not the 



ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 43 

translator, then, trust to his notions of what the 
ancient Greeks would have thought of him ; he will 
lose himself in the vague. Let him not trust to what 
the ordinary English reader thinks of him ; he will 
5 be taking the blind for his guide. Let him not trust 
to his own judgment of his own work ; he may be 
misled by individual caprices. Let him ask how his 
work affects those who both know Greek and can 
appreciate poetry ; whether to read it gives the Pro- 

lovost of Eton, or Professor Thompson at Cambridge, 
or Professor Jowett here in Oxford, at all the same 
feeling which to read the original gives them. I con- 
sider that when Bentley said of Pope's translation, 
" It was a pretty poem, but must not be called 

15 Homer," the work, in spite of all its power and 
attractiveness, was judged. 

'Qs av 6 <]>p6vifjLo^ opio-aev, — "as the judicious would 
determine," — that is a test to which every one pro- 
fesses himself willing to submit his works. Unhappily, 

20 in most cases, no two persons agree as to who " the 
judicious " are. In the present case, the ambiguity 
is removed : I suppose the translator at one with me 
as to the tribunal to which alone he should look for 
judgment ; and he has thus obtained a practical test 

25 by. which to estimate the real success of his work. 
How is he to proceed, in order that his work, tried 
by this test, may be found most successful ? 

First of all, there are certain negative counsels 
which I will give him. Homer has occupied men's 

30 minds so much, such a literature has arisen about 
him, that every one who approaches him should 
resolve strictly to limit himself to tliat which may 



44 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 

directly serve the object for which he approaches 
him. I advise the translator to have nothing to do 
with the questions, whether Homer ever existed ; 
whether the poet of the Iliad be one or many ; 
whether the Iliad be one poem or an Achillcis and an 5 
//m^ stuck together ; whether the Christian doctrine 
of the Atonement is shadowed forth in the Homeric 
mythology ; whether the Goddess Latona in any way 
prefigures the Virgin Mary, and so on. These are 
questions which have been discussed with learning, lo 
with ingenuity, nay, with genius ; but they have two 
inconveniences, — one general for all who approach 
them, one particular for the translator. The general 
inconvenience is that there really exist no data for 
determining them. The particular inconvenience is 15 
that their solution by the translator, even were it 
possible, could be of no benefit to his transla- 
tion. 

I advise him, again, not to trouble himself with 
constructing a special vocabulary for his use in trans- 20 
lation ; with excluding a certain class of English 
words, and with confining himself to another class, in 
obedience to any theory about the peculiar qualities 
of Homer's style. Mr. Newman says that "' the entire 
dialect of Homer being essentially archaic, that of a 25 
translator ought to be as much Saxo-Norman as 
possible, and owe as little as possible to the elements 
thrown into our language by classical learning." Mr. 
Newman is unfortunate in the observance of his own 
theory ; for I continually find in his translation words 30 
of Latin origin, which seem to me quite alien to the 
simplicity of Homer, — ** responsive," for instance, 



ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 45 

which is a favourite word of Mr. Newman, to repre- 
sent the Homeric afjieLp6ix€vo<; : — 

" Great Hector of the motley helm thus spake to her responsive." 
" But thus respojisively to him spake god-like Alexander." 

5 And the word " celestial," again, in the grand address 
of Zeus to the horses of Achilles, 

" You, who are born celestial, from Eld and Death exempted ! " 

seems to me in that place exactly to jar upon the 
feeling as too bookish. But, apart from the question 

10 of Mr. Newman's fidelity to his own theory, such a 
theory seems to me both dangerous for a translator 
and false in itself. Dangerous for a translator ; 
because, wherever one finds such a theory announced 
(and one finds it pretty often), it is generally followed 

15 by an explosion of pedantry ; and pedantry is of all 
things in the world the most un -Homeric. False in 
itself; because, in fact, we owe to the Latin element 
in our language most of that very rapidity and clear 
decisiveness by which it is contradistinguished from 

20 the German, and in sympathy with the languages of 
Greece and Rome : so that to limit an English trans- 
lator of Homer to words of Saxon origin is to deprive 
him of one of his special advantages for translating 
Homer. In Voss's well-known translation of Homer, 

25 it is precisely the qualities of his German language 
itself, something heavy and trailing both in the struc- 
ture of its sentences and in the words of which it is 
composed, which prevent his translation, in spite of 
the hexameters, in spite of the fidelity, from creating 

30 in us the impression created by the Greek. Mr. 



46 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 

Newman's prescription, if followed, would just strip 
the English translator of the advantage which he has 
over Voss. 

The frame of mind in which we approach an author 
influences our correctness of appreciation of him ; and 5 
Homer should be approached by a translator in the 
simplest frame of mind possible. Modern sentiment 
tries to make the ancient not less than the modern 
world its own ; but against modern sentiment in its 
applications to Homer the translator, if he would feel lo 
Homer truly — and unless he feels him truly, how can 
he render him truly ? — cannot be too much on his 
guard. For example : the writer of an interesting 
article on English translations of Homer, in the last 
number of the National Revieiv, quotes, I see, with 15 
admiration, a criticism of Mr. Ruskin on the use of 
the epithet <\)vcrit,oo<i, "life-giving," in that beautiful 
passage in the third book of the Iliad^ which follows 
Helen's mention of her brothers Castor and Pollux 
as alive, though they were in truth dead : — 20 

ws 4>aT0 • rods 5' tjStj Kar^x^^ 0i'crt(*oos ala 
iv AaKeoai/Jiovt addi, <P'-^V ^'' Trarpioi yaiy. ' 

"The poet," says Mr. Ruskin, "has to speak of the 
earth in sadness ; but he will not let that sadness 
affect or change his thought of it. No ; though 25 
Castor and Pollux be dead, yet the earth is our 
mother still — fruitful, life-giving." This is a just 
specimen of that sort of application of modern senti- 
ment to the ancients, against which a student, who 
wislies to feel the ancients truly, cannot too resolutely 30 

^ ///Vr/, iii. 243. 



ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 47 

defend himself. It reminds one, as, alas ! so much 
of Mr. Ruskin's writing reminds one, of those words 
of the most delicate of living critics : " Comme tout 
genre de composition a son ecueil particulier, celui du 
^ genre romanesque^ cest le faiLX^ The reader may feel 
moved as he reads it ; but it is not the less an ex- 
ample of *' le faux " in criticism ; it is false. It is not 
true, as to that particular passage, that Homer called 
the earth (fivat^oos, because, '' though he had to speak 

10 of the earth in sadness, he would not let that sadness 
change or affect his thought of it," but consoled him- 
self by considering that *' the earth is our mother 
still — fruitful, life-giving." It is not true, as a 
matter of general criticism, that this kind of senti- 

15 mentality, eminently modern, inspires Homer at all. 
*' From Homer and Polygnotus I every day learn 
more clearly," says Goethe, " that in our life here 
above ground we have, properly speaking, to enact 
Hell":'^ — if the student must absolutely have a key- 

20 note to the I/iad, let him take this of Goethe, and see 
what he can do with it ; it will not, at any rate, like 
the tender pantheism of Mr. Ruskin, falsify for him 
the whole strain of Homer. 

These are negative counsels ; I come to the posi- 

25 tive. When I say, the translator of Homer should 
above all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities of 
his author ; that he is eminently rapid ; that he is 
eminently plain and direct, both in the evolution of 
his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both 

30 in his syntax and in his Avords ; that he is eminently 
plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that 
^ Brief zvcchscl zwischen Schiller tiiid Goethe, vi. 230. 



48 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 

is, in his matter and ideas ; and, finally, that he is 
eminently noble ; — I probably seem to be saying what 
is too general to be of much service to anybody. Yet 
it is strictly true that, for want of duly penetrating 
themselves with the first-named quality of Homer, 5 
his rapidity, Cowper and Mr. Wright have failed in 
rendering him : that, for want of duly appreciating 
the second-named quality, his plainness and directness 
of style and diction, Pope and Mr. Sotheby have 
failed in rendering him ; that for want of appreciating lo 
the third, his plainness and directness of ideas, Chap- 
man has failed in rendering him ; while for want of 
appreciating the fourth, his nobleness, Mr. Newman, 
who has clearly seen some of the faults of his prede- 
cessors, has yet failed more conspicuously than any of 15 
them. 

Coleridge says, in his strange language, speaking 
of the union of the human soul with the divine 
essence, that this takes place 

" Whene'er the mist, which stands 'twixt God and thee, 20 

Defecates to a pure transparency ; " 

and so, too, it may be said of that union of the trans- 
lator with his original, which alone can produce a 
good translation, that it takes place when the mist 
which stands between them — the mist of alien modes 25 
of thinking, speaking, and feeling on the translator's 
part — " defecates to a pure transparency," and dis- 
appears. But between Cowper and Homer — (Mr. 
Wright repeats in the main Cowper's manner, as 
Mr. Sotheby repeats Pope's manner, and neither Mr. 30 
Wright's translation nor Mr. Sotheby's has, I must 



ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 49 

be forgiven for saying, any proper reason for existing) 
— between Cowper and Homer there is interposed the 
mist of Cowper's elaborate Miltonic manner, entirely 
alien to the flowing rapidity of Homer ; between Pope 
Sand Homer there is interposed the mist of Pope's 
literary artificial manner, entirely alien to the plain 
naturalness of Homer's manner ; between Chapman 
and Homer there is interposed the mist of the fanci- 
fulness of the Elizabethan age, entirely alien to the 

lo plain directness of Homer's thought and feeling; 
while between Mr. Newman and Homer is interposed 
a cloud of more than Egyptian thickness — namely, a 
manner, in Mr. Newman's version, eminently ignoble, 
while Homer's manner is eminently noble. 

15 I do not despair of making all these propositions 
clear to a student who approaches Homer with a free 
mind. First, Homer is eminently rapid, and to this 
rapidity the elaborate movement of Miltonic blank 
verse is alien. The reputation of Cowper, that most 

20 interesting man and excellent poet, does not depend 
on his translation of Homer ; and in his preface to 
the second edition, he himself tells us that he felt, — 
he had too much poetical taste not to" feel, — on re- 
turning to his own version after six or seven years, 

25 " more dissatisfied with it himself than the most 
difficult to be pleased of all his judges." And he was 
dissatisfied with it for the right reason, — that " it 
seemed to him deficient in the grace of ease'' Yet he 
seems to have originally misconceived the manner of 

30 Homer so much, that it is no wonder he rendered 
him amiss. " The similitude of Milton's manner to 
that of Homer is such," he says, *' that no person 



50 ON TRANSLATING HOMER, 

familiar with both can read either without being re- 
minded of the other ; and it is in those breaks and 
pauses to which the numbers of the English poet are 
so much indebted, both for their dignity and variety, 
that he chiefly copies the Grecian." It would be 5 
more true to say : " The unlikeness of Milton's 
manner to that of Homer is such, that no person 
familiar with both can read either without being 
struck with his difference from the other ; and it is 
in his breaks and pauses that the English poet is lo 
most unlike the Grecian." 

The inversion and pregnant conciseness of Milton 
or Dante are, doubtless, most impressive qualities of 
style ; but they are the very opposites of the direct- 
ness and flowingness of Homer, which he keeps alike 15 
in passages of the simplest narrative, and in those of 
the deepest emotion. Not only, for example, are 
these lines of Cowper un-Homeric : — 

" So numerous seemed those fires the banks between 
Of Xanthus, blazing, and the fleet of Greece 20 

In prospect all of Troy ; " 

where the position of the word ''blazing " gives an 
entirely un-Homeric movement to this simple passage, 
describing the fires of the Trojan camp outside of 
Troy ; but the following lines, in that very highly- 25 
wrought passage where the horse of Achilles answers 
his master's reproaches for having left Patroclus on 
the field of battle, are equally un-Homeric : — 

" For not through sloth or tardiness on us 
Aught chargeable, have Ilium's sons thine arms 30 

Stript from Patroclus* shoulders ; but a God 
Matchless in battle, offspring of bright-haired 



ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 5 1 

Latona, him contending in the van 
Slew, for the glory of the chief of Troy." 

Here even the first inversion, *' have Ilium's sons 
thine arms Stript from Patroclus' shoulders," gives 
5 the reader a sense of a movement not Homeric ; and 
the second inversion, "a God him contending in the 
van Slew," gives this sense ten times stronger. In- 
stead of moving on without check, as in reading the 
original, the reader twice finds himself, in reading the 

lo translation, brought up and checked. Homer moves 
with the same simplicity and rapidity in the highly- 
wrought as \vl the simple passage. 

It is in vain that Cowper insists on his fidelity : 
"my chief boast is that I have adhered closely to my 

15 original": — "the matter found in me, whether the 
reader like it or not, is found also in Homer ; and 
the matter not found in me, how much soever the 
reader may admire it, is found only in Mr. Pope." 
To suppose that it is fidelity to an original to give its 

20 matter, unless you at the same time give its manner ; 
or, rather, to suppose that you can really give its 
matter at all, unless you can give its manner, is just 
the mistake of our pre-Raphaelite school of painters 
who do not understand that the peculiar effect of 

25 nature resides in the whole and not in the parts. So 
the peculiar effect of a poet resides in his manner and 
movement, not in his words taken separately. It is 
well known how conscientiously literal is Cowper in 
his translation of Homer. It is well known how 

30 extravagantly free is Pope. 

"So let it be ! 
Portents and prodigies are lost on me: " 



52 ON TI^ AN SLA TING HOMER. 

that is Pope's rendering of the words, 

Sttf^e, tI ixoL ddvarov ixavreieai ; oibi ri ae XP'O' ^ 

" Xcinthus, why prophesiest thou my death to me? thou needest 
not at all : "— 

yet on the whole, Pope's translation of the //iad is 5 
more Homeric than Cowper's, for it is more rapid. 

Pope's movement, however, though rapid, is not 
of the same kind as Homer's ; and here I come to the 
real objection to rhyme in a translation of Homer. 
It is commonly said that rhyme is to be abandoned lo 
in a translation of Homer, because " the exigencies of 
rhyme," to quote Mr. Newman, "positively forbid 
faithfulness"; because "a just translation of any 
ancient poet in rhyme," to quote Cowper, " is im- 
possible." This, however, is merely an accidental 15 
objection to rhyme. If this were all, it might be 
supposed, that if rhymes were more abundant, Homer 
could be more adequately translated in rhyme. But 
this is not so ; there is a deeper, a substantial objec- 
tion to rhyme in a translation of Homer. It is, that 20 
rhyme inevitably tends to pair lines which in the 
original are independent, and thus the movement of 
the poem is changed. In these lines of Chapman, for 
instance, from Sarpedon's speech to Glaucus, in the 
twelfth book of the I/iad : — 25 

" O friend, if keeping back 
"Would keep back age from us, and death, and that we might not 

wrack 
In this life's human sea at all, but that deferring now 
We shurned death ever, — nor would I half this vain valor show, 3c 

' Iliad, xix. 420. 



ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 53 

Nor glorify a folly so, to wish thee to advance ; 

But since we must go, though not here, and that besides the chanc* 

Proposed now, there are infinite fates," etc. 

Here the necessity of making the line, 

5 " Nor glorify a folly so, to wish thee to advance," 

rhyme with the line which follows it, entirely changes 
and spoils the movement of the passage. 

o^Te K€u aiiTos ivl Trpihroun fMaxoi/Mrji/, 
oijTe K€ <7k (TT^WoifXL fioLxv^ fs Kv5idv€ipap- ^ 

lo " Neither would I myself go forth to fight with the foremost, 
Nor would I urge thee on to enter the glorious battle," 

says Homer ; there he stops, and begins an opposed 
movement : — 

vvv 8' — €fnrr]s yap Kijpes icpeardaiv davdroio — 

15" But — for a thousand fates of death stand close to us always " — 

This line, in which Homer wishes to go away with 
the most marked rapidity from the line before, Chap- 
man is forced, by the necessity of rhyming, intimately 
to connect with the line before. 

20 •' But since we must go, though not here, and that besides the 
chance " — 

The moment the word chance strikes our ear, we are 
irresistibly carried back to advance and to the whole 
previous line, which, according to Homer's own feel- 
25 ing, we ought to have left behind us entirely, and to 
be moving farther and farther away from. 

Rhyme certainly, by intensifying antithesis, can 
intensify separation, and this is precisely what Pope 

* Jliad, xii. 324. 



54 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 

does ; but this balanced rhetorical antithesis, though 
very effective, is entirely un-Homeric. And this is 
what I mean by saying that Pope fails to render 
Homer, because he does not render his plainness and 
directness of style and diction. Where Homer marks 5 
separation by moving away, Pope marks it by antithe- 
sis. No passage could show this better than the 
passage I have just quoted, on which I will pause for 
a moment. 

Robert Wood, whose Essay on the Genius of Homer 10 
is mentioned by Goethe as one of the books which 
fell into his hands when his powers were first develop- 
ing themselves, and strongly interested him, relates 
of this passage a striking story. He says that in 
1762, at the end of the Seven Years' War, being 15 
then Under-Secretary of State, he was directed to 
wait upon the President of the Council, Lord Gran- 
ville, a few days before he died, with the preliminary 
articles of the Treaty of Paris. "I found him," he 
continues, '' so languid, that I proposed postponing 20 
my business for another time ; but he insisted that 
I should stay, saying, it could not prolong his life to 
neglect his duty ; and repeating the following passage 
out of Sarpedon's speech, he dwelled with particular 
emphasis on the third line, which recalled to his mind 25 
the distinguishing part he had taken in public 
affairs : — 

c5 ireTTOv, el /x€V yap iroKeixov irepl rbvbe (pvy6vT€, 

alel dr] /xiWoLfjicv dy-qpo} r' dOaudro} re 

eaaead', ovre Kev avrbs ivi Trpuroiai fxaxoifxtjv,^ 30 

^ These are the words on which Lord Granville " dwelled with 
particular emphasis." 



ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 55 

o(;Te Ke ak ctt^Woi/jll fioixv^ f^ KV^idveipav 
vvv 5' — efiirijs yap Kijpes i^peaTaaLv davdroio 
/xvpiai, ds ovK icTTL (pvyeTu ^pdrov, ovo' virdKv^ai — 
to/xeu. 

5 His Lordship repeated the last word several times 
with a calm and determinate resignation ; and, after a 
serious pause of some minutes, he desired to hear the 
Treaty read, to which he listened with great atten- 
tion, and recovered spirits enough to declare the 

lo approbation of a dying statesman (I use his own 
words) ' on the most glorious war, and most honour- 
able peace, this nation ever saw.' " ^ 

I quote this story, first, because it is interesting as 
exhibiting the English aristocracy at its very height 

15 of culture, lofty spirit, and greatness, towards the 
middle of the last century. I quote it, secondly, 
because it seems to me to illustrate Goethe's saying 
which I mentioned, that our life, in Homer's view of 
it, represents a conflict and a hell ; and it brings out 

20 too, what there is tonic and fortifying in this doctrine. 
I quote it, lastly, because it shows that the passage 
is just one of those in translating which Pope will be 
at his best, a passage of strong emotion and oratorical 
movement, not of simple narrative or description. 

25 Pope translates the passage thus : — 

" Could all our care elude the gloomy grave 
Which claims no less the fearful than the brave, 
For lust of fame I should not vainly dare 
In fighting fields, nor urge thy soul to war : 

• Robert Wood, Essay on the Original Genius and Writings 
of Homer, London, 1775, p. vii. 



56 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 

But since, alas ! ignoble age must come, 
Disease, and death's inexorable doom ; 
The life which others pay, let us bestow, 
And give to fame what we to nature owe." 

Nothing could better exhibit Pope's prodigious 5 
talent, and nothing, too, could be better in its own 
way. But, as Bentley said, "You must not call it 
Homer." One feels that Homer's thought has passed 
through a literary and rhetorical crucible, and come 
out highly intellectualised ; come out in a form which 10 
strongly impresses us, indeed, but which no longer 
impresses us in the same way as when it was uttered 
by Homer. The antithesis of the last two lines — 

t^; " The life which others pay, let us bestow. 

And give to fame what we to nature owe " — 15 

is excellent, and is just suited to Pope's heroic 
couplet ; but neither the antithesis itself, nor the 
couplet which conveys it is suited to the feeling or 
to the movement of the Homeric Ioil^v. 

A literary and intellectualised language is, however, 20 
in its own way well suited to grand matters ; and 
Pope, with a language of this kind and his own ad- 
mirable talent, comes off well enough as long as he 
has passion, or oratory, or a great crisis to deal with. 
Even here, as I have been pointing out, he does not 25 
render Homer ; but he and his style are in themselves 
strong. It is when he comes to level passages, pas- 
sages of narrative or description, that he and his style 
are sorely tried, and prove themselves weak. A per- 
fectly plain direct style can of course convey the 30 



ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 57 

simplest matter as naturally as the grandest ; indeed, 
it must be harder for it, one would say, to convey a 
grand matter worthily and nobly, than to convey a 
common matter, as alone such a matter should be 
5 conveyed, plainly and simply. But the style of 
Rasselas is incomparably better fitted to describe a 
sage philosophising than a soldier lighting his camp- 
fire. The style of Pope is not the style of Rasselas ; 
but it is equally a literary style, equally unfitted to 

lo describe a simple matter with the plain naturalness of 
Homer. 

Every one knows the passage at the end of the 
eighth book of the Iliad, where the fires of the Trojan 
encampment are likened to the stars. It is very far 

15 from my wish to hold Pope up to ridicule, so I shall 
not quote the commencement of the passage, which in 
the original is of great and celebrated beauty, and 
in translating which Pope has been singularly and 
notoriously unfortunate. But the latter part of the 

20 passage, where Homer leaves the stars, and comes to 
the Trojan fires, treats of the plainest, most matter-of- 
fact subject possible, and deals with this, as Homer 
always deals with every subject, in the plainest and 
most straightforward style. *' So many in number, 

25 between the ships and the streams of Xanthus, shone 
forth in front of Troy the fires kindled by the Trojans. 
There were kindled a thousand fires on the plain ; and 
by each one there sat fifty men in the light of the 
blazing fire. And the horses, munching white barley 

30 and rye, and standing by the chariots, waited for the 
bright-throned Morning." ' 

' Iliad, viii. 560. 



58 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 

In Pope's translation, this plain story becomes the 
following: — 

" So many flames before proud Ilion blaze, 
And brighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays ; 
The long reflections of the distant fires 5 

Gleam on the walls and tremble on the spires. 
A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild, 
And shoot a shady lustre o'er the field. 
Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend, 
Whose umbered arms, by fits, thick flashes send ; lo 

Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn, 
And ardent warriors wait the rising morn." 

It is for passages of this sort, which, after all, form 
the bulk of a narrative poem, that Pope's style is so 
bad. In elevated passages he is powerful, as Homer 15 
is powerful, though not in the same way ; but in plain 
narrative, Avhere Homer is still powerful and delightful, 
Pope, by the inherent fault of his style, is ineffective 
and out of taste. Wordsworth says somewhere, that 
wherever Virgil seems to have composed " with his 20 
eye on the object," Dryden fails to render him. 
Homer invariably composes " with his eye on the 
object," whether the object be a moral or a material 
one : Pope composes with his eye on his style, into 
which he translates his object, whatever it is. That, 25 
therefore, which Homer conveys to us immediately. 
Pope conveys to us through a medium. He aims at 
turning Homer's sentiments pointedly and rhetori- 
cally ; at investing Homer's description with orna- 
ment and dignity. A sentiment may be changed by 30 
being put into a pointed and oratorical form, yet may 
still be very effective in that form ; but a description, 



ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 5' 9 

the moment it takes its eyes off that which it is to 
describe, and begins to think of ornamenting itself, is 
worthless. 

Therefore, I say, the translator of Homer should 
5 penetrate himself with a sense of the plainness and 
directness of Homer's style ; of the simplicity with 
which Homer's thought is evolved and expressed. 
He has Pope's fate before his eyes, to show him what 
a divorce may be created even between the most 

10 gifted translator and Homer by an artificial evolution 
of thought and a literary cast of style. 

Chapman's style is not artificial and literary like 
Pope's, nor his movement elaborate and self-retarding 
like the Miltonic movement of Cowper. He is plain- 

15 spoken, fresh, vigorous, and, to a certain degree, rapid; 
and all these are Homeric qualities. I cannot say 
that I think the movement of his fourteen-syllable 
line, which has been so much commended, Homeric ; 
but on this point I shall have more to say by and 

20 by, when I come to speak of Mr. Newman's metrical 
exploits. But it is not distinctly anti-Homeric, like 
the movement of Milton's blank verse ; and it has a 
rapidity of its own. Chapman's diction, too, is gener- 
ally good, that is, appropriate to Homer ; above all, 

25 the syntactical character of his style is appropriate. 
With these merits, what prevents his translation from 
being a satisfactory version of Homer ? Is it merely 
the want of literal faithfulness to his original, imposed 
upon him, it is said, by the exigencies of rhyme ? 

30 Has this celebrated version, which has so many ad- 
vantages, no other and deeper defect than that ? Its 
author is a poet, and a poet, too, of the Elizabethan 



6o ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 

age ; the golden age of English literature as it is 
called, and on the whole truly called ; for, whatever 
be the defects of Elizabethan literature (and they are 
great), we have no development of our literature to 
compare with it for vigour and richness. This 5 
age, too, showed what it could do in translating, 
by producing a masterpiece, its version of the 
Bible. 

Chapman's translation has often been praised as 
eminently Homeric. Keats's fine sonnet in its honour 10 
every one knows ; but Keats could not read the 
original, and therefore could not really judge the 
translation. Coleridge, in praising Chapman's version, 
says at the same time, " It will give you small idea 
of Homer." But the grave authority of Mr. Hallam 15 
pronounces this translation to be '' often exceedingly 
Homeric"; and its latest editor boldly declares that 
by what, with a deplorable style, he calls *Miis own 
innative Homeric genius," Chapman '' has thoroughly 
identified himself with Homer"; and that " we pardon 20 
him even for his digressions, for they are such as we 
feel Homer himself would have written." 

I confess that I can never read twenty lines of 
Chapman's version without recurring to Bentley's cry, 
" This is not Homer ! " and that from a deeper cause 25 
tlian any unfaithfulness occasioned by the fetters of 
rhyme. 

I said that there were four things which eminently 
distinguished Homer, and with a sense of which 
Homer's translator should penetrate himself as fully 30 
as possible. One of these four things was, the plain- 
ness and directness of Homer's ideas. I have just 



ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 6 1 

been speaking of the plainness and directness of his 
style ; but the plainness and directness of the con- 
tents of his stj^le, of his ideas themselves, is not less 
remarkable. But as eminently as Homer is plain, so 
5 eminently is the Elizabethan literature in general, 
and Chapman in particular, fanciful. Steeped in 
humours and fantasticality up to its very lips, the 
Elizabethan age, newly arrived at the free use of the 
human faculties after their long term of bondage, and 

lo delighting to exercise them freely, suffers from its 
own extravagance in this first exercise of them, can 
hardly bring itself to see an object quietly or to de- 
scribe it temperately. Happily, in the translation of 
the Bible, the sacred character of their original in- 

15 spired the translators with such respect that they did 
not dare to give the rein to their own fancies in dealing 
with it. But, in dealing with works of profane litera- 
ture, in dealing with poetical works above all, which 
highly stimulated them, one may say that the minds 

20 of the Elizabethan translators were too active ; that 
they could not forbear importing so much of their 
own, and this of a most peculiar and Elizabethan 
character, into their original, that they effaced the 
character of the original itself. 

25 Take merely the opening pages to Chapman's trans- 
lation, the introductory verses, and the dedications. 
You will find: — ■ 



" An Anagram of the name of our Dread Prince, 
My most gracious and sacred Maecenas, 
30 Henry, Prince of Wales, 

Our Sunn, Heyr, Peace, Life," — 



62 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 

Henry, son of James the First, to whom the work is 
dedicated. Then comes an address, 

" To the sacred Fountain of Princes, 

Sole Empress of Beauty and Virtue, Anne, Queen 

Of England," etc. 5 

All the Middle Age, with its grotesqueness, its 
conceits, its irrationality, is still in these opening 
pages ; they by themselves are sufificient to indicate 
to us what a gulf divides Chapman from the " clearest- lo 
souled " of poets, from Homer ; almost as great a gulf 
as that which divides him from Voltaire. Pope has 
been sneered at for saying that Chapman writes 
"somewhat as one might imagine Homer himself to 
have written before he arrived at years of discretion." 15 
But the remark is excellent : Homer expresses him- 
self like a man of adult reason, Chapman like a man 
whose reason has not yet cleared itself. For instance, 
if Homer had had to say of a poet, that he hoped his 
merit was now about to be fully established in the 20 
opinion of good judges, he was as incapable of saying 
this as Chapman says it, — " Though truth in her very 
nakedness sits in so deep a pit, that from Gades to 
Aurora, and Ganges, few eyes can sound her, I hope 
yet those few here will so discover and confirm that 25 
the date being out of her darkness in this morning of 
our poet, he shall now gird his temples with the sun," 
— I say, Homer was as incapable of saying this in that 
manner, as Voltaire himself would have been. Homer, 
indeed, has actually an affinity with Voltaire in the 30 
unrivalled clearness and straightforwardness of his 
thinking ; in the way in which he keeps to one thought 



ON TRANSLATING HOMER. d^ 

at a time, and puts that thought forth in its complete 
natural plainness, instead of being led away from it 
by some fancy striking him in connection with it, and 
being beguiled to wander off with this fancy till his 
5 original thought, in its natural reality, knows him no 
more. What could better show us how gifted a race 
was this Greek race ? The same member of it has not 
only the power of profoundly touching that natural 
heart of humanity which it is Voltaire's weakness 

10 that he cannot reach, but can also address the under- 
standing with all Voltaire's admirable simplicity and 
rationality. 

My limits will not allow me to do more than shortly 
illustrate, from Chapman's version of the Iliad^ what 

15 I mean when I speak of this vital difference between 
Homer and an Elizabethan poet in the quality of their 
thought ; between the plain simplicity of the thought 
of the one, and the curious complexity of the thought 
of the other. As in Pope's case, I carefully abstain 

20 from choosing passages for the express purpose of 
making Chapman appear ridiculous ; Chapman, like 
Pope, merits in himself all respect, though he too, 
like Pope, fails to render Homer. 

In that tonic speech of Sarpedon, of which I have 

25 said so much. Homer, you may remember, has : — 

e^ [ikv yap, TroKefxov irepl rSude cpvyoure, 
alel 5r] fi^WoifMev ayqpoi t' ddavdrci) re 
'4<T(xe<jd\ — 

" if indeed, but once this battle avoided, 
30 We were for ever to live without growing old and immortal," 

Chapman cannot be satisfied with this, but must add a 
fancy to it : — 



()4 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 

" if keeping back 
Would keep back age from us, and death, and that we might 

not zvrack 
In this lifcs human sea at all ; " 

and SO on. Again ; in another passage which I have 5 
before quoted, where Zeus says to the horses of 
Peleus, 

ri acpm dofiev UTjXTJ't avaKTi. 
6v7]Ti^ ) vfxeis d' iarbv dyrjpo} t' ddavdT(a re- ^ 

" Why gave we you to royal Peleus, to a mortal ? but ye are lo 
without old age, and immortal." 

Chapman sophisticates this into : — 

" Why gave we you t' a mortal king, when immortality 
And incapacity of age so dignifies your states ? " 

Again ; in the speech of Achilles to his horses, where 15 
Achilles, according to Homer, says simply, "Take 
heed that ye bring your master safe back to the host 
of the Danaans, in some other sort than the last time, 
when the battle is ended," Chapman sophisticates this 
into : — 20 

" When with blood, for this day's fast observed, revenge shall yield 
Our heart satiety, bring us off." 

In Hector's famous speech, again, at his parting from 
Andromache, Homer makes him say : *' Nor does my 
own heart so bid me " (to keep safe behind the walls), 25 
*' since I have learned to be staunch always, and to 
fight among the foremost of the Trojans, busy on 
behalf of my father's great glory, and my own." ^ In 
^ Iliad, xvii. 443, ^ Iliad, vi, 444. 



ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 65 

Chapman's hands this becomes : — 

" The spirit I first did breathe, 
Did never teach me that ; much less, since the contempt of death 
Was settled in me, and my mitid knew what a worthy was, 
5 Whose office is to lead in fight, and give no danger pass 

Without improvement. In this fire must Hector's trial shine : 
Here must his country, father, friends, be in him made divine" 

You see how ingeniously Homer's plain thought is 
iorf?i€ntedj as the French would say, here. Homer 
10 goes on : *' For well I know this in my mind and in 
my heart, the day will be, when sacred Troy shall 
perish ": — 

eaaerai ^fJ^ap, 6t' dv ttot' oXwXt;' IXtos ip'^. 

Chapman makes this : 

15 " And such a stormy day shall come, in mind and soul I know, 
When sacred Troy shall shed her tozvers, for tears of over- 
throw." 

I might go on for ever, but I could not give you a 
better illustration than this last, of what I mean by 

20 saying that the Elizabethan poet fails to render Homer 
because he cannot forbear to interpose a play of 
thought between his object and its expression. Chap- 
man translates his object into Elizabethan, as Pope 
translates it into the Augustan of Queen Anne ; both 

25 convey it to us through a medium. Homer, on the 
other hand, sees his object and conveys it to us 
immediately. 

And yet, in spite of this perfect plainness and 
directness of Homer's style, in spite of this perfect 



66 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 

plainness and directness of his ideas, he is eminently 
noble J he works as entirely in the grand style, he is 
as grandiose, as Phidias, or Dante, or Michael 
Angelo. This is what makes his translators despair. 
" To give relief," says Cowper, *'to prosaic subjects " 5 
(such as dressing, eating, drinking, harnessing, travel- 
ling, going to bed), that is to treat such subjects 
nobly, in the grand style, " without seeming unreason- 
ably tumid, is extremely difficult." It is difficult, but 
Homer has done it. Homer is precisely the incom- 10 
parable poet he is, because he has done it. His 
translator must not be tumid, must not be artifical, 
must not be literary ; true : but then also he must not 
be commonplace, must not be ignoble. I have shown 
you how translators of Homer fail by wanting rapidity, 15 
by wanting simplicity of style, by wanting plainness of 
thought : in a second lecture I will show you how a 
translator fails by wanting nobility. — On the Study 
of Celtic Literature and on Tra?islating Horner^ ed. 
1895, pp. 141-168. 



Ipbilolog^ anO ^Literature, 

But Mr. Newman does not confine himself to com- 
plaints on his own behalf, he complarins on Homer's 
behalf too. He says that my '' statements about 
Greek literature are against the most notorious and 
5 elementary fact"; that I "do a public wrong to 
literature by publishing them"; and that the Pro- 
fessors to whom I appealed in my three Lectures, 
"would only lose credit if they sanctioned the use 
I make of their names." He does these eminent men 

lo the kindness of adding, however, that, " whether they 
are pleased with this parading of their names in behalf 
of paradoxical error, he may well doubt," and that 
" until they endorse it themselves, he shall treat my 
process as a piece of forgery." He proceeds to discuss 

15 my statements at great length, and with an erudition 
and ingenuity which nobody can admire more than I 
do. And he ends by saying that my ignorance is 
great. 

Alas ! that is very true. Much as Mr. Newman 

20 was mistaken when he talked of my rancour, he is 
entirely right when he talks of my ignorance. And 
yet, perverse as it seems to say so, I sometimes find 
myself wishing, when dealing with these matters of 
poetical criticism, that my ignorance were even greater 

25 than it is. To handle these matters properly there is 
needed a poise so perfect that the least overweight in 

6s 



68 PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 

any direction tends to destroy the balance. Temper 
destroys it, a crotchet destroys it, even erudition may 
destroy it. To press to the sense of the thing itself 
with which one is dealing, not to go off on some col- 
lateral issue about the thing, is the hardest matter in 5 
the world. The " thing itself " with which one is 
here dealing, — the critical perception of poetic truth, — 
is of all things the most volatile, elusive, and evanes- 
cent ; by even pressing too impetuously after it, one 
runs the risk of losing it. The critic of poetry should 10 
have the finest tact, the nicest moderation, the most 
free, flexible, and elastic spirit imaginable ; he should 
be indeed the "ondoyant et divers," the undulating 
and diverse being of Montaigne. The less he can 
deal with his object simply and freely, the more things 15 
he has to take into account in dealing with it, — the 
more, in short, he has to encumber himself, — so much 
the greater force of spirit he needs to retain his 
elasticity. But one cannot exactly have this greater 
force by wishing for it ; so, for the force of spirit one 20 
has, the load put upon it is often heavier than it will 
well bear. The late Duke of Wellington said of a 
certain peer that ''it was a great pity his education 
had been so far too mAich for his abilities." In like 
manner, one often sees erudition out of all proportion 25 
to its owner's critical faculty. Little as I know, there- 
fore, I am always apprehensive, in dealing with poetry, 
lest even that little should prove *' too much for my 
abilities." 

With this consciousness of my own lack of learning, 30 
— nay, with this sort of acquiescence in it, with this 
belief that for the labourer in the field of poetical 



PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 69 

criticism learning has its disadvantages, — I am not 
likely to dispute with Mr. Newman about matters of 
erudition. All that he says on these matters in his 
Reply I read with great interest : in general I agree 
5 with him ; but only, I am sorry to say, up to a certain 
point. Like all learned men, accustomed to desire 
definite rules, he draws his conclusions too absolutely ; 
he wants to include too much under his rules ; he 
does not quite perceive that in poetical criticism the 

10 shade, the fine distinction, is everything ; and that when 
he has once missed this, in all he says he is in truth 
but beating the air. For instance : because I think 
Homer noble, he imagines I must think him elegant ; 
and in fact he says in plain words that I do think 

15 him so, — that to me Homer seems ** pervadingly 
elegant." But he does not. Virgil is elegant, — 
" pervadingly elegant," — even in passages of the 
highest emotion : 

" O, iibi campi, 
20 Spercheosque, et virginibus bacchata Laca^nis 

Taygeta ! " ' 

Even there Virgil, though of a divine elegance, is still 
elegant : but Homer is not elegant ; the word is quite 
a wrong one to apply to him, and Mr. Newman is 
25 quite right in blaming any one he finds so applying it. 
Again ; arguing against my assertion that Homer is 
not quaint, he says : " It is quaint to call waves wet, 
milk white, blood dusky, horses swgle-hoofed, words 
winged, Vulcan Lobfoot (KvXXoTroStwv), a spear long- 

^ " O for the fields of Thessaly and the streams of Spercheios ! 
O for the hills alive with the dances of the Laconian maidens, 
the hills of Taygetus ! " — Georgics, ii. 486. 



70 PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 

shadowy^' and so on. I find I know not how many 
distinctions to draw here. I do not think it quaint to 
call waves wet^ or milk white^ or words winged ; but I 
do think it quaint to call horses single-hoofedy or Vul- 
can Lobfoot, or a spear longshadowy. As to callings 
blood dusky^ I do not feel quite sure ; I will tell Mr. 
Newman my opinion when I see the passage in which 
he calls it so. But then, again, because it is quaint 
to call Vulcan Lobfoot, I cannot admit that it was 
quaint to call him K^AXottoSiW ; nor that, because it lo 
is quaint to call a spear longshadowy^ it was quaint to 
call it SoXixoo-Ktov. Here Mr. Newman's erudition 
misleads him : he knows the literal value of the Greek 
so well, that he thinks his literal rendering identical 
with the Greek, and that the Greek must stand or fall 15 
along with his rendering. But the real question is, 
not whether he has given us, so to speak, full change 
for the Greek, but how he gives us our change : we 
want it in gold, and he gives it us in copper. Again : 
"It is quaint," says Mr. Newman, '* to address a 20 
young friend as ' O Pippin ! ' — it is quaint to com- 
pare Ajax to an ass whom boys are belabouring." 
Here, too, Mr. Newman goes much too fast, and his 
category of quaintness is too comprehensive. To 
address a young friend as " O Pippin ! " is, I cordially 25 
agree with him, very quaint ; although I do not think 
it was quaint in Sarpedon to address Glaucus as 

TrcVov : but in comparing, whether in Greek or in 
English, Ajax to an ass whom boys are belabouring, 

1 do not see that there is of necessity anything quaint 3o 
at all. Again ; because I said that eld^ Hef, in sooth, 
and other words, are, as Mr. Newman uses them in 



PHILOLOG V AND LITER A TURE. 1 1 

certain places, bad words, he imagines that I must 
mean to stamp these words with an absolute reproba- 
tion ; and because I said that " my Bibliolatry is ex- 
cessive," he imagines that I brand all words as ignoble 
5 which are not in the Bible. Nothing of the kind : 
there are no such absolute rules to be laid down in 
these matters. The Bible vocabulary is to be used as 
an assistance, not as an authority. Of the words 
which, placed where Mr. Newman places them, I have 
lo called bad words, every one may be excellent in some 
other place. Take eldy for instance : when Shaks- 
peare, reproaching man with the dependence in which 
his youth is passed, says : 

' ' all thy blessed youth 
15 Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms 

Of palsied eld," . . . 

it seems to me that eld comes in excellently there, in 
a passage of curious meditation ; but when Mr. New- 
man renders ayrjpo) t aOavaTO) T£ by " from jE/d and 

20 Death exempted," it seems to me he infuses a tinge of 
quaintness into the transparent simplicity of Homer's 
expression, and so I call e/d a bad word in that 
place. 

Once more. Mr. Newman lays it down as a general 

25 rule that " many of Homer's energetic descriptions 
are expressed in coarse physical words." He goes 
on : "I give one illustration, — Tpoic? TrpovTvif/av doWee^. 
Cowper, misled by the ignis fahius of ' stateliness,' 
renders it absurdly : 

30 ' The powers of Ilium gave the first assault 

Embattled close ; ' 



72 PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 

but it is, strictly, ' The Trojans knocked forward (or, 
thumped, butted forward) hi close pack! The verb is 
too coarse for later polished prose, and even the adjec- 
tive is very strong {^packed together). I believe, that 
' forward in pack the Trojans pitched,' would not be 5 
really unfaithful to the Homeric colour ; and I main- 
tain, that ' forward in mass the Trojans pitched,' 
would be an irreprovable rendering." He actually 
gives us all that as if it were a piece of scientific de- 
duction ; and as if, at the end, he had arrived at an lo 
incontrovertible conclusion. But, in truth, one can- 
not settle these matters quite in this way. Mr. New- 
man's general rule may be true or false (I dislike to 
meddle with general rules), but every part in what 
follows must stand or fall by itself, and its soundness 15 
or unsoundness has nothing at all to do with the 
truth or falsehood of Mr. Newman's general rule. 
He first gives, as a strict rendering of the Greek, 
*' The Trojans knocked forward (or, thumped, butted 
forward), in close pack." I need not say that, as a 20 
" strict rendering of the Greek," this is good, — all Mr. 
Newman's " strict renderings of the Greek " are sure 
to be, as such, good; but '' in close pack," for doAAces ; 
seems to me to be what Mr. Newman's renderings 
are not always, — an excellent poetical rendering of the 25 
Greek ; a thousand times better, certainly, than Cow- 
per's " embattled close." Well, but Mr. Newman 
goes on : " I believe that, * forward in pack the Tro- 
jans pitched,' would not be really unfaithful to the 
Homeric colour." Here, I say, the Homeric colour 30 
is half washed out of Mr. Newman's happy rendering 
of doAAe'e? ; while in "pitched" for irpovTvif/av, the 



PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 73 

literal fidelity of the first rendering is gone, while 
certainly no Homeric colour has come in its place. 
Finally, Mr. Newman concludes : " I maintain that 
' forward in mass the Trojans pitched/ would be an 
5 irreprovable rendering." Here, in what Mr. Newman 
fancies his final moment of triumph, Homeric colour 
and literal fidelity have alike abandoned him alto- 
gether ; the last stage of his translation is much worse 
than the second, and immeasurably worse than the 

lo first. 

All this to show that a looser, easier method than 
Mr. Newman's must be taken, if we are to arrive at 
any good result in these questions. I now go on to 
follow Mr. Newman a little further, not at all as wish- 

15 ing to dispute with him, but as seeking (and this is 
the true fruit we may gather from criticisms upon us) 
to gain hints from him for the establishment of some 
useful truth about our subject, even when I think 
him wrong. I still retain, I confess, my conviction 

20 that Homer's characteristic qualities are rapidity of 
movement, plainness of words and style, simplicity 
and directness of ideas, and, above all, nobleness, 
the grand manner. Whenever Mr. Newman drops a 
word, awakens a train of thought, which leads me to 

25 see any of these characteristics more clearly, I am 
grateful to him ; and one or two suggestions of this 
kind which he affords, are all that now, — having ex- 
pressed my sorrow that he should have misconceived 
my feelings towards him, and pointed out what I think 

30 the vice of this method of criticism, — I have to notice 
in his Reply. 

Such a suggestion I find in Mr. Newman's remarks 



74 PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 

on my assertion that the translator of Homer must 
not adopt a quaint and antiquated style in rendering 
him, because the impression which Homer makes upon 
the living scholar is not that of a poet quaint and 
antiquated, but that of a poet perfectly simple, per- 5 
fectly intelligible. I added that we cannot, I confess, 
really know how Homer seemed to Sophocles, but 
that it is impossible to me to believe that he seemed 
to him quaint and antiquated. Mr. Newman asserts, 
on the other hand, that I am absurdly wrong here ; lo 
that Homer seemed " out and out " quaint and anti- 
quated to the Athenians ; that " every sentence of 
him was more or less antiquated to Sophocles, who 
could no more help feeling at every instant the foreign 
and antiquated character of the poetry than an Eng- 15 
lishman can help feeling the same in reading Burns's 
poems." And not only does Mr. Newman say this, 
but he has managed thoroughly to convince some of 
his readers of it. " Homer's Greek," says one of 
them, " certainly seemed antiquated to the historical 20 
times of Greece. Mr. Newman, taking a far broader 
historical and philological view than Mr. Arnold, 
stoutly maintains that it did seem so." And another 
says : *' Doubtless Homer's dialect and diction were 
as hard and obscure to a later Attic Greek as Chaucer 25 
to an Englishman of our day." 

Mr. Newman goes on to say, that not only was 
Homer antiquated relatively to Pericles, but he is 
antiquated to the living scholar ; and, indeed, is in 
himself, *' absolutely antique, being the poet of a bar- 30 
barian age." He tells us of his " inexhaustible quaint- 
nesses," of his '* very eccentric diction "; and he 



PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 75 

infers, of course, that he is perfectly right in rendering 
him in a quaint and antiquated style. 

Now this question, — whether or no Homer seemed 
quaint and antiquated to Sophocles, — I call a delight- 
5 ful question to raise. It is not a barren verbal dis- 
pute ; it is a question " drenched in matter," to' use an 
expression of Bacon ; a question full of flesh and 
blood, and of which the scrutiny, though I still think 
we cannot settle it absolutely, may yet give us a 

10 directly useful result. To scrutinise it may lead us 
to see more clearly what sort of a style a modern 
translator of Homer ought to adopt. 

Homer's verses were some of the first words which 
a young Athenian heard. He heard them from his 

15 mother or his nurse before he went to school ; and at 
school, when he went there, he was constantly occu- 
pied with them. So much did he hear of them that 
Socrates proposes, in the interests of morality, to 
have selections from Homer made, and placed in the 

20 hands of mothers and nurses, in his model republic ; 
in order that, of an author with whom they were sure 
to be so perpetually conversant, the young might learn 
only those parts which miglit do them good. His 
language was as familiar to Sophocles, we may be 

25 quite sure, as the language of the Bible is to us. 

Nay, more. Homer's language was not, of course, 
in the time of Sophocles, the spoken or written lan- 
guage of ordinary life, any more than the language of 
the Bible, any more than the language of poetry, is 

30 with us ; but for one great species of composition — 
epic poetry — it was still the current language ; it was 
the language in which every one who made that sort 



76 PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 

of poetry composed. Every one at Athens who 
dabbled in epic poetry, not only understood Homer's 
language, — he possessed it. He possessed it as every 
one who dabbles in poetry with us, possesses what 
may be called the poetical vocabulary, as distinguished 5 
from the vocabulary of common speech and of 
modern prose : I mean, such expressions as perchance 
for perhaps^ spake for spoke^ aye for ever^ don for //// on^ 
charmed for charmed, and thousands of others. 

I might go to Burns and Chaucer, and, taking lo 
words and passages from them, ask if they afforded 
any parallel to a language so familiar and so possessed. 
But this I will not do, for Mr. Newman himself sup- 
plies me with what he thinks a fair parallel, in its 
effect ujDon us, to the language of Homer in its effect 15 
upon Sophocles. He says that such words as nion, 
londis, iibbard, withouten^ muchel, give us a tolerable but 
incomplete notion of this parallel ; and he finally 
exhibits the parallel in all its clearness, by this poeti- 
cal specimen : — 20 

" Dat mon, quhich hauldeth Kyngis af 
Londis yn feo, niver 
(I tell 'e) feereth aught ; sith hee 
Doth hauld hys londis yver," 

Now, does Mr. Newman really think that Sophocles 25 
could, as he says, *' no more help feeling at every 
instant the foreign and antiquated character of 
Homer, than an Englishman can help feeling the 
same in hearing " these lines ? Is he quite sure of it ? 
He says he is ; he will not allow of any doubt or hesi- 30 
tation in the matter. I had confessed we could not 



PHILOLOGY AND LIl^ERATURE. 77 

really know how Homer seemed to Sophocles ; — " Let 
Mr. Arnold confess for himself," cries Mr. Newman, 
*' and not for me, who know perfectly well." And 
this is what he knows ! 
5 Mr. Newman says, however, that I " play falla- 
ciously on the words familiar and unfamiliar "; that 
" Homer's words may have been familiar to the 
Athenians (/. e. often heard) even when they were 
either not understood by them or else, being under- 

lo stood, were yet felt and known to be utterly foreign. 
Let my renderings," he continues, " be heard, as Pope 
or even Cowper has been heard, and no one will be 
'surprised.' " 

But the whole question is here. The translator 

15 must not assume that to have taken place which has 
not taken place, although, perhaps, he may wish it 
to have taken place, — namely, that his diction is 
become an established possession of the minds of 
men, and therefore is, in its proper place, familiar 

20 to them, will not " surprise " them. If Homer's 
language was familiar, — that is, often heard, — then 
to this language words like londis and libbard, which 
are not familiar, offer, for the translator's purpose, 
no parallel. For some purpose of the philologer they 

25 may offer a parallel to it ; for the translator's purpose 
they offer none. The question is not, whether a 
diction is antiquated for current speech, but whether 
it is antiquated for that particular purpose for which 
it is employed. A diction that is antiquated for com- 

30 mon speech and common prose, may very well not be 
antiquated for poetry or certain special kinds of prose. 
" Peradventure there shall be ten found there," is 



78 PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 

not antiquated for Biblical prose, though for conversa- 
tion or for a newspaper it is antiquated. " The 
trumpet spake not to the armed throng," is not anti- 
quated for poetry, although we should not write in a 
letter, "he spake to me," or say, "the British soldier is 5 
anned with the Enfield rifle." But when language 
is antiquated for that particular purpose for which 
it is employed, — as numbers of Chaucer's words, for 
instance, are antiquated for poetry, — such language is 
a bad representative of language which, like Homer's, lo 
was never antiquated for that particular purpose for 
which it was employed. I imagine that ^rikr)l6^tia 
for n>;Xet8oi;, in Homer, no more sounded antiquated 
to Sophocles than armed for arvi'd, in Milton, sounds 
antiquated to us ; but Mr. Newman's withoiiten and 15 
muchel do sound to us antiquated, even for poetry, and 
therefore they do not correspond in their effect upon 
us with Homer's words in their effect upon Sophocles. 
When Chaucer, wlio uses such words, is to pass cur- 
rent amongst us, to be familiar to us, as Homer was 20 
familiar to the Athenians, he has to be modernised, as 
Wordsworth and others set to work to modernise him ; 
but an Athenian no more needed to have Homer 
modernised, than we need to have the Bible modern- 
ised, or Wordsworth himself. 25 

Therefore, when Mr. Newman's words bragly^ 
bulkin^ and the rest, are an established possession 
of our minds, as Homer's words were an established 
possession of an Athenian mind, he may use them ; 
but not till then. Chaucer's words, the words of 30 
Burns, great poets as these were, are yet not thus an 
established possession of an Englishman's mind, and 



PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 79 

therefore they must not be used in rendering Homer 
into English. 

Mr. Newman has been misled just by doing that 
which his admirer praises him for doing, by taking a 
5 " far broader historical and philological view than " 
mine. Precisely because he has done this, and has 
applied the " philological view " where it was not 
applicable, but where the *' poetical view " alone was 
rightly applicable, he has fallen into error. 

lo It is the same with him in his remarks on the diffi- 
culty and obscurity of Homer. Homer, I say, is per- 
fectly plain in speech, simple, and intelligible. And I 
infer from this that his translator, too, ought to be 
perfectly plain in speech, simple, and intelligible ; 

15 ought not to say, for instance, in rendering 

Oure /ce <xk (TT^Woifxi /J^dxv^ fs KvdidueLpav . . . 

" Nor liefiy thee would I advance to man-ennobling 
battle," — and things of that kind. Mr. Newman 
hands me a list of some twenty hard words, invokes 

20 Buttman, Mr. Maiden, and M. Benfey, and asks me 
if I think myself wiser than all the world of Greek 
scholars, and if I am ready to supply the deficiencies 
of Liddell and Scott's Lexicon ! But here, again, 
Mr. Newman errs by not perceiving that the question 

25 is one not of scholarship, but of a poetical translation 
of Homer. This, I say, should be perfectly simple 
and intelligible. He replies by telling me that dSt^s, 
eiAiVoSes, and ortyaAoets are hard words. Well, but 
what does he infer from that ? That the poetical 

30 translator, in his rendering of them, is to give us 
a sense of the difficulties of the scholar, and so is to 



8o nilLOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 

make his translation obscure? If he does not mean 
that, how, by bringing forward these hard words, does 
he touch the question whether an English version of 
Homer should be plain or not plain? If Homer's 
poetry, as poetry, is in its general effect on the poetical 5 
reader perfectly simple and intelligible, the uncertainty 
of the scholar about the true meaning of certain words 
can never change this general effect. Rather will the 
poetry of Homer make us forget his philology, than 
his philology make us forget his poetry. It may even 10 
be affirmed that every one who reads Homer perpetu- 
ally for the sake of enjoying his poetry (and no one 
who does not so read him will ever translate him 
well), comes at last to form a perfectly clear sense in 
his own mind for every important word in Homer, 15 
such as ctSti/o?, or rfXifSaro^, whatever the scholar's 
doubts about the word may be. And this sense is 
present to his mind with perfect clearness and fulness, 
whenever the word recurs, although as a scholar he 
may know that he cannot be sure whether this sense 20 
is the right one or not. But poetically he feels clearly 
about the word, although philologically he may not. 
The scholar in him may hesitate, like the father in 
Sheridan's play ; but the reader of poetry in him 
is, like the governor, fixed. The same thing happens 25 
to us with our own language. How many words occur 
in the Bible, for instance, to which thousands of 
hearers do not feel sure they attach the precise real 
meaning ; but they make out a meaning for them out 
of what materials they have at hand ; and the words, 30 
heard over and over again, come to convey this mean- 
ing with a certainty which poetically is adequate, 



PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 8i 

though not philologically. How many have attached 
a clear and poetically adequate sense to " the beam " 
and " the mote,'' though not precisely the right one ! 
How clearly, again, have readers got a sense from 
5 Milton's words, *' grate on their scrannel pipes," who 
yet might have been puzzled to write a commentary 
on the word scrannel for the dictionary ! So we get a 
clear sense from dStvos as an epithet for grief, after 
often meeting with it and finding out all we can about 

10 it, even though that all be philologically insufficient ; 
so we get a clear sense from etAtVoSes as an epithet 
for cows. And this his clear poetical sen?e about the 
words, not his philological uncertainties about them, 
is what the translator has to convey. Words like 

i^bragly and bulkin offer no parallel to these words; 
because the reader, from his entire want of familiarity 
with the words bragly and bulkin, has no clear sense 
of them poetically. 

Perplexed by his knowledge of the philological 

20 aspect of Homer's language, encumbered by his own 
learning, Mr. Newman, I say, misses the poetical 
aspect, misses that with which alone we are here con- 
cerned. ** Homer is odd," he persists, fixing his eyes 
on his own philological analysis of fxwwi, and /xepoi/zs, 

25 and KvAXoTToStW, and not on these words in their 
synthetic character ; — just as Professor Max Mtiller, 
going a little farther back, and fixing his attention on 
the elementary value of the word OvyaTrjp, might say 
Homer was *' odd " for using l/iat word ; — " if the 

30 whole Greek nation, by long familiarity, had become 
inobservant of Homer's oddities," — of the oddities of 
this " noble barbarian," as Mr. Newman elsewhere 



82 PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE. 

calls him, this ''noble barbarian" with the "lively 
eye of the savage," — *' that would be no fault of mine. 
That would not justify Mr. Arnold's blame of me for 
rendering the words correctly." Correctly^ — ah, but 
what is correctness in this case ? This correctness of 5 
his is the very rock on which Mr. Newman has split. 
He is so correct that at last he finds peculiarity every- 
where. The true knowledge of Homer becomes at 
last, in his eyes, a knowledge of Homer's "peculiari- 
ties, pleasant and unpleasant." Learned men know lo 
these " peculiarities," and Homer is to be translated 
because th? unlearned are impatient to know them 
too. " That," he exclaims, " is just why people want 
to read an English Homer, — to knoiv all his oddities, 
just as learned 7ne7i do'' Here I am obliged to shake 15 
my head, and to declare that, in spite of all my 
respect for Mr. Newman, I cannot go these lengths 
with him. He talks of my "monomaniac fancy that 
there is nothing quaint or antique in Homer." Terrible 
learning, — I cannot help in my turn exclaiming, — 20 
terrible learning, which discovers so much ! — On the 
Study of Celtic Literature and on Translating Honer, 
ed. 1895, PP- 244-260. 



^be (3vanD St^le, 

Nothing has raised more questioning among my 
critics than these words, — 7ioble, the grand style. Peo- 
ple complain that I do not define these words suffi- 
ciently, that I do not tell them enough about them. 
5 " The grand style, — but what is the grand style ? " — 
they cry ; some with an inclination to believe in it, 
but puzzled ; others mockingly and with incredulity. 
Alas ! the grand style is the ^la<^t matter i n the world 
for verbal defin iti on to deal wit V» ^d^q^^^^^^^y One 

lo may say of it as is said of faith: " One must feel it in 
order to know what it is." But, as of faith, so too one 
may say of nobleness, of the grand style: "Woe to 
those who know it not ! " Yet this expression, though 
indefinable, has a charm ; one is the better for consid- 

15 ering it ; boniim est, nos hie esse; nay, one loves to try 
to explain it, though one knows that one must speak 
imperfectly. For those, then, who ask the question, — 
What is the grand style ? — with sincerity, I will try to 
make some answer, inadequate as it must be. For those 

20 who ask it mockingly I have no answer, except to repeat 

to them, with compassionate sorrow, the Gospel words: 

Moriemini in peccatisvestris, — Ye shall die in your sins. 

But let me, at any rate, have the pleasure of again 

giving, before I begin to try and define the grand 

25 style, a specimen of what it is. 

83 



84 THE GRAND STYLE. 

" Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole, 
More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged 
To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days, 
On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues." . . . 

There is the grand style in perfection ; and any one 5 
who has a sense for it, will feel it a thousand times 
better from repeating those lines than from hearing 
anything I can say about it. 

Let us try, however, what can be said, controlling 
what we say by examples. I think it will be found lo 
that the grand style arises in poetry, when a 7wbl e 

natu re, toetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with 

se2J£i±bi _a serious subject. I think this definition will 
be found to cover all instances of the grand style in 
poetry which present themselves. I think it will be 15 
found to exclude all poetry which is not in the grand 
style. And I think it contains no terms which are 
obscure, which themselves need defining. Even those 
who do not understand what is meant by calling 
poetry noble, will understand, I imagine, what is 20 
meant by speaking of a noble nature in a man. But 
the noble or powerful nature — the bedeutendes indi- 
viduum of Goethe — is not enough. For instance, Mr. 
Newman has zeal for learning, zeal for thinking, zeal 
for liberty, and all these things are noble, they enno- 25 
ble a man ; but he has not the poetical gift ; there 
m ust be the poetical gift, the '' divine faculty/' also. . 
And, besides all this, the subject m ust b e a serious 
^^^^^^J^Q^ ^^ jg JO"^y by ^ kind , of ■ li cense th at we ran 

treated with simp licity _or_jeveritv_. Here is the great 
difficulty ; the poets of the world have been many ; 
there has been wanting neither abundance of poetical 



THE GRAND STYLE. 85 

gift nor abundance of noble natures ; but a poetical 
gift so happy, in a noble nature so circumstanced and 
trained, that the result is a continuous style, perfect in 
simplicity or perfect in severity, has been extremely 
5 rare. Oiie poet has had the gifts of nature and faculty 
in unequalled fidn_ess,~wTtlTdLrrTtre~ciTUiimsraiToe^ 
training wJiich make this sustained perfection of style 
possible. Of^ther poets, some have caught this per- 
fect " straiiL_iiow-a»dr-t44enj in— short- piec£s_or single 
lolineSj^but have not been able to maintain it through 
cofrsiderable works ; others have composed all their 
pTodTrcttons"in a style which^Jby^com parison with th e^ 
best^one must call secondary. 



The best model of t he grand style simp l ^is Homer ; 

15 perhaps the best model of the_gra nd style severe is 

Mirron r Birtr^ggirt^ js^^em^kajjle foraffording; 

admirab le examples of both style s ; he has the grand 



style which arises from simplicity, and he has the 



grandstyle "which arises"from severity ; and^roni him 
20 1 wTTTTtlusri^^ thein" both. In~a former lecture I 
potiTt"ed~"our~wTiat that severity of poetical style is, 
which comes from saying a thing with a kind of intense 
compression, or in an allusive, brief, almost haughty 
way, as if the poet's mind were charged with so many 
25 and such grave matters, that he would not deign to 
treat any one of them explicitly. Of this severity the 
last line of the following stanza of the Ptit-gatory is a 
good example. Dante has been telling Forese that Vir- 
gil had guided hi m through Hell, and he~goes on": — 



30 " Indi m' han tratto su gli suoi conforti, 

Salendo e rigirando la Montagna 
Che drizza vol che il m on do fee e lorti." ^ 
^ Ttirgatory, xxiii. 124. 



86 THE GRAND STYLE. 

" Thence hath his com forting aid led me up, cli mb-_ 
ing and circling the Mountain, which straightens you 
luhom the world made crooked:' These last words, '* la 



Montagna che drizza voi che il mondo fece tortiy — " the 
Mountain which straightens you whom the world madeS 
crooked,'' — for the Mountain of Purgatory, I call an 
excellent specimen of the grand style in severity, 
where the poet's mind is too full charged to suffer him 
to speak more explicitly. But the very next stanza is 
a beautiful specimen of the grand style in simplicity, lo 
where a noble nature and a poetical gift unite to utter 
a thing with the most limpid plainness and clear- 
ness : — 

" Tan to dice di farmi sua compagna 
Ch' io saro la dove fia Beatrice ; 15 

Quivi convien che senza hii rimagna."^ 

'' So ]ong/^T2ante__ront;inneSj " sr> long he (Virg il ) 
_^aiTg7TTp"^jvTrrT>pnr me rnmpany^ until T <;hn11 hp therp 

where Beatrice is ; there it behoves that without him 
I remai?n?l_^iit_ the noble simpl icity of that in thej o_ 
Italian no words of mine can render. 



Both these styles, the simple and the severe, are 
truly grand ; the severe seems, perhaps, the grandest, 
so long as we atten d m pst't n thp gr f^t ppr<;onality. to 
the noble nature, in the poet its author ; the simple 25 
see ms th e gr andest when we attend ~mo stto The 
exquisitejfacult y, to the poetical gift. But the simple 
i s^no dou bt t o be preferr ed. I t is the more magical : 
in t he other there is something intellectual, something 
^whicli gives sc ope for a play of th nu gh L-whicEISiy^ 
^ Ibid, xxiii. 127. 



THE GRAND STYLE. 87 

exist whe re the poetical _ gift is either wanting or pres - 
ent in only inferior degree : t he se vere is m ucjijnapre 
imitable, and this a little spoils its charm, .. A kind of 



semblance of this style keeps Young going, one may 
5 say, through all the nine parts of that most indifferent 
production, the Night Thoughts. But the grand style 
in simplicity is inimitable : 

atwv d<T(pa\r]s 
oiK eyepr' oiir' AtaxiSa irapa UrjXei, 
10 oijT€ Tap' dvTLd^ip Kd5/xcp- Xiyovrai fidv ^poTwv 

6\^ov viripraTov ol (rx^Tv, ol re Kal x/3i;cra/i7n//ca;v 
fxeXTTOfievdu iv 6p€i MoKTav, Kat iv iirTairiiXois 
dl'ov Q-q^aL% ... 3 

There is a limpidness in that, a want of salient points 
15 to seize and transfer, which makes imitation impos- 
sible, except by a genius akin to the genius which 
produced it. — On the Study of Celtic Literature and 07i 
Trajislating Horner^ ed. 1895, pp. 264-269. 

3 " A secure time fell to the lot neither of Peleus the son of 
^acus, nor of the godlike Cadmus ; howbeit these are said to 
have had, of all mortals, the supreme of happiness, who heard 
the golden-snooded Muses sing, one of them on the mountain 
(Pelion), the other in seven-gated Thebes." 



Stgle in literature. 

If I were asked where English poetry got these 
th ree things, its turn for s"tyTe7iTs~t"urn fomieian— — 
choly, and its turn for natural magic, for catching 
and rendering the charm of nature in a wonderfully 
near and vivid way, — I should answer, with some 5 
doubt, that it got much of its turn for style from a 
C eltic source ; with less doubt, that it go t much of 
i ts jnelancholv from a C elt i c so u r c^ L "^^ kj^ J19. jl2." ^ ^ 
at all, t hat from a Celtic source it go t nearly all its 
natural magic. . ~ ~" ~ rtr 



Any German with penetration and tact in matters 



of literary criticism will own that the principal de- 
ficiency of German poetry is in style ; that for style, 
in the highest sense, it shows but little feeling. Take 
the eminent masters of style, the poets who best give 15 
the idea of what the peculiar power which lies in 
style is, — Pindar, Virgil, Dante, Milton, A n example 
of the peculiar effect which these poets produce, you 
can har dly give from German " poetiy.; — Examples — 
enough you can give from German poetry of the 20 
effect produced by genius, thought, and feeling ex- 
pressing themselves in clear language, simple lan- 
guage, passionate language, eloquent language, with 
harmony and melody ; but not of the peculiar effect 
exercised by eminent power of style. Every reader 25 
of Dante can at once call to mind what the peculiar 

83 



STYLE IN LITERATURE. 89 

effect I mean is ; I spoke of it in my lectures on 
translating Homer, and there I took an example of 
it from Dante, who perhaps manifests it more emi- 
nently than any other poet. But from Milton, too, 
5 one may take examples of it abundantly ; compare 
this from Milton : 

. . . . nor sometimes forget 
Those other two equal with me in fate, 
So were I equall'd with them in renown, 
10 Blind Thamyris and blind Mceonides — 

with this from Goethe : 

Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, 
Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt. 

Nothing can be better in its way than the style in 

15 which Goethe there presents his thought, but it is 
the style of prose as much as of poetry ; it is lucid, 
harmonious, earnest, eloquent, but it has not received 
that peculiar kneading, heightening, and recasting 
which is observable in the style of the passage from 

20 Milton, — a style which seems to have for its cause a 
certain pressure of emotion, and an ever-surging, yet 
bridled, excitement in the poet, giving a special 
intensity to his way of delivering himself. In poetical 
races and epochs, this turn for style is peculiarly 

25 observable ; and perhaps it is only on condition of 
having this somewhat heightened and difficult man- 
ner, so different from the plain manner of prose, that 
poetry gets the privilege of being loosed, at its best 
moments, into that perfectly simple, limpid style, 

30 which is the supreme style of all, but the simplicity 



9© STYLE IN LITERATURE, 

of which is still not the simplicity of prose. The 
simplicity of Menander's style is the simplicity of 
prose, and is the same kind of simplicity as that 
which Goethe's style, in the passage I have quoted, 
exhibits ; but Menander does not belong to a great 5 
poetical moment, he comes too late for it ; it is the 
simple passages in poets like Pindar or Dante which 
are perfect, being masterpieces of poetical simplicity. 
One may say the same of the simple passages in 
Shakspeare ; they are perfect, their simplicity being 10 
a poetical simplicity. They are the golden, easeful, 
crowning moments of a manner which is always 
pitched in another key from that of prose, a manner 
changed and heightened ; the Elizabethan style, reg- 
nant in most of our dramatic poetry to this day, is 15 
mainly the continuation of tliis manner of Shak- 
speare's. It was a manner much more turbid and 
strewn with blemishes than the manner of Pindar, 
Dante, or Milton ; often it was detestable ; but it 
owed its existence to Shakspeare's instinctive impulse 20 
towards style in poetry, to his native sense of the 
necessity for it ; and without the basis of style every- 
where, faulty though it may in some places be, we 
should not have had the beauty of expression, unsur- 
passable for effectiveness and charm, which is reached 25 
in Shakspeare's best passages. The turn for style is 
perceptible all through English poetry, proving, to 
my mind, the genuine poetical gift of the race ; this 
turn imparts to our poetry a stamp of high distinc- 
tion, and sometimes it doubles the force of a poet not 30 
by nature of the very highest order, such as Gray, 
and raises him to a rank beyond what his natural 



STYLE IN LITERATURE. 9 1 

richness and power seem to promise. Goethe, with 
his fine critical perception, saw clearly enough both 
the power of style in itself, and the lack of style in 
the literature of his own country ; and perhaps if we 
5 regard him solely as a German, not as a European, 
his great work was that he labored all his life to im- 
part style into German literature, and firmly to estab- 
lish it there. Hence the immense importance to 
him of the world of classical art, and of the produc- 

10 tions of Greek or Latin genius, where style so emi- 
nently manifests its power. Had he found in the 
German genius and literature an element of style 
existing by nature and ready to his hand, half his 
work, one may say, would have been saved him, and 

15 he might have done much more in poetry. But as it 
was, he had to try and create, out of his own powers, 
a style for German poetry, as well as to provide con- 
tents for this style to carry ; and thus his labour as a 
poet was doubled. 

2o It is to be observed that power of style, in the 
sense in which I am here speaking of style, is some- 
thing quite different from the power of idiomatic, 
simple, nervous, racy expression, such as the expres- 
sion of healthy, robust natures so often is, such as 

25 Luther's was in a striking degree. Stvle^_in_ my sense 
of the word, is a peculiar recasting and heightening, 

Unde£ Jl certain conditi on O^ gpin'fnal fvritpmprft, r>f 
what a ma n \\C\^ fn gay^ |n ^n^^^ ^ rmnr^or nr tn n ^ rl 

dignity and distinction to it ; and dignity and distinc- 

3otion are not terms which suit many acts or words of 

Luther. Deeply touched with the Gemeinheit which 

is tlie bane of his nation, as he is at the same time a 



92 STYLE IN LITERATURE. 

grand example of the honesty which is his nation's 
excellence, he can seldom even show himself brave, 
resolute, and truthful, without showing a strong dash 
of coarseness and commonness all the while ; the 
right definition of Luther, as of our own Bunyan, is 5 
that he is a Philistine of genius. So Luther's sincere 
idiomatic German, — such language as this : " Hilf 
lieber Gott, wie manchen Jammer habe ich gesehen^ 
dass der gemeine Mann doch so gar nichts weiss von 
der christlichen Lehre ! " — no more proves a power of it 
style in German literature, than Cobbett's sinewy 
idiomatic English proves it in English literature. 
Power of style, properly so called, as manifested in 
masters of style like Dante or Milton in poetry, 
Cicero, Bossuet, or Bolingbroke in prose, is something 15 
quite different, and has, as I have said, for its charac- 
teristic effect, this : to add dignity and distinction. — 
On the Study of Celtic Literature, ed. 1895, pp. 102-107. 



IWature in BngUsb ipoetr^. 

T he Celt's quick feeling for what is noble and 
distinguishe d gave his poetry style ; hijjiidomitable 
personajitv_gaye_jt_pride and passion ; h issen sTbiii t y^ 
and nervous exaltation g ave it a better gift still, the 

~5"gift^i rendering wit h wonderfal felicity th e mag ical 
charm of nature^_ The forest solitude, the bubbling 
spring, the wild flowers, are everywhere in romance. 
They have a mysterious life and grace there ; they 
are Nature's own children, and utter her secret in a 

loway which make them something quite different from 

the woods, waters, and plants of Greek and Latin 

poetry. Now of this delicate magic, Celtic romance 

is so pre-eminent a mistress, thatTT seems impossTBTe^ 

To believe the power did not come into romance from 

15 the Celts. ^ Magic is just the word for it, — the magic 
of nature ; not merely the beauty of nature, — that the 
Greeks and Latins had ; not merely an honest smack 
of the soil, a faithful realism, — that the Germans had ; 
but the intimate life of Nature, her weird power and 

20 her fairy charm. As the Saxon names of places, with 
the pleasant wholesome smack of the soil in them, — 

' Rhyme, — the most striking characteristic of our modern poetry 
as distinguished from that of the ancients, and a main source, to 
our poetry, of its magic and charm, of what we call its romantic 
element^ — rhyme itself, all the weight of evidence tends to show, 
comes into our poetry from the Celts. 

93 



94 NA TURK IN ENGLISH POE TR V. 

Weathersfield, Thaxted, Shalford,— are to the Celtic 
names of places, with their penetrating, lofty beauty, — 
Velindra, Tyntagel, Caernarvon, — so is the homely 
realism of German and Norse nature to the fairy-like 
loveliness of Celtic nature. Gwydion wants a wife 5 
for his pupil: "Well," says Math, "we will seek, I 
and thou, by charms and illusions, to form a wife for 
him out of flowers. So they took the blossoms of the 
oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms 
of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a lo 
maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever 
saw. And they baptized her, and gave her the name 
of Flower-Aspect." Celtic romance is full of exquisite 
touches like Jhat^^showirLgJJie del icacy of the Celt 's 



— feeling in these matters, and how deeply Nature lets i5_ 

hfnr (Tome jntojier^ec rets. The quick dropping of 

bloodTs^called " faster than the fall of the dewdrop 
from the blade of reed-grass upon the earth, when 
the dew of June is at the heaviest." And thus is 
Olwen described : " More yellow was her hair than 20 
the flower of the broom, and her skin was whiter than 
the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands 
and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood- 
anemony amidst the spray of the meadow foun- 
tains." For loveliness it would be hard to beat 25 
that ; and for magical clearness and nearness take 
the following : — 

"And in the evening Peredur entered a valley, 
and at the head of the valley he came to a hermit's 
cell, and the hermit welcomed him gladly, and there 30 
he spent the night. And in the morning he arose, 
and when he went forth, behold, a shower of snow 



NA rURE IN ENGLISH POETR F. 95 

had fallen the night before, and a hawk had killed a 
wild-fowl in front of the cell. And the noise of the 
horse scared the hawk away, and a raven alighted 
upon the bird. And Peredur stood and compared 
5 the blackness of the raven, and the whiteness of the 
snow, and the redness of the blood, to the hair of the 
lady whom best he loved, which was blacker than 
the raven, and to her skin, which was whiter than 
the snow, and to her two cheeks, which were redder 

lothan the blood upon the snow appeared to be." 

And this, which is perhaps less striking, is not less 
beautiful : — 

"And early in the day Geraint and Enid left the 
wood, and they came to an open country, with 

15 meadows on one hand and mowers mowing the 
meadows. And there was a river before them, and 
the horses bent down and drank the water. And 
they went up out of the river by a steep bank, and 
there they met a slender stripling with a satchel 

20 about his neck; and he had a small blue pitcher in 
his hand, and a bowl on the mouth of the pitcher." 

And here the landscape, up to this point so Greek 
in its clear beauty, is suddenly magicalised by the 
romance touch : — 

25 *' And they saw a tall tree by the side of the river, 
one-half of which was in flames from the root to the 
top, and the other half was green and in full leaf." 

Magic is the word to insist upon, — a magically 
vivid and near interpretation of nature ; since it is 

30 this which constitutes the special charm and power 
of the effect I am calling attention to, and it is for 
this that the Celt's sensibility gives him a peculiar 



g6 NA TURE IN ENGLISH EOETR V. 

aptitude. But the matter needs rather fine handling, 
and it is easy to make mistakes here in our criticism. 
In the first place, Europe tends constantly to become 
more and more one community, and we tend to 
become Europeans instead of merely Englishmen, 5 
Frenchmen, Germans, Italians ; so whatever aptitude 
or felicity one people imparts into spiritual work, 
gets imitated by the others, and thus tends to become 
the common property of all. Therefore anything so 
beautiful and attractive as the natural magic I am 10 
speaking of, is sure, nowadays, if it appears in the 
productions of the Celts, or of the English, or of the 
French, to appear in the productions of the Germans 
also, or in the productions of the Italians ; but there 
will be a stamp of perfectness and inimitableness 15 
about it in the literatures where it is native, which it 
will not have in the literatures where it is not native. 
Novalis or Ruckert, for instance, have their eye fixed 
on nature, and have undoubtedly a feeling for natural 
magic ; a rough-and-ready critic easily credits them 20 
and the Germans with the Celtic fineness of tact, the 
Celtic nearness to Nature and her secret ; but the 
question is whether the strokes in the German's 
picture of nature^ have ever the indefinable delicacy, 

'^ Take the following attempt to render the natural magic sup- 
posed , to pervade Tieck's poetry: — ''In diesen Dichtungen 
herrscht eine geheimnissvolle Innigkeit, ein sonderbares Einver- 
standniss mit der Natur, besonders mit der Pflanzen- und Stein- 
reich. Der Leser fiililt sich da wie in einem verzauberten 
Walde ; er hort die unterirdischen Quellen melodisch rauschen ; 
wildfremde Wunderblumen schauen ihn an mit ihren bunten 
sehnsiichtigen Augen ; unsichtbare I.ippen kiissen seine Wangen 
mit neckender Zartlichkeit ; /lo/ic Pike, wic goldue Glocken, 



NA TURK IN ENGLISH FOE TR V. 97 

charm, and perfection of the Celt's touch in the pieces 
I just now quoted, or of Shakspeare's touch in his 
daffodil, Wordsworth's in his cuckoo, Keats's in his 
Autumn, Obermann's in his mountain birch-tree or 
5 his Easter-daisy among the Swiss farms. To decide 
where the gift for natural magic originally lies, 
whether it is properly Celtic or Germanic, we must 
decide this question. 

In the second place, there are many ways of 

10 handling nature, and we are here only concerned 
with one of them ; but a rough-and-ready critic 
imagines that it is all the same so long as Nature 
is handled at all, and fails to draw the needful dis- 
tinction between modes of handling her. But these 

15 modes are many ; I will mention four of them now : 
there is the conventional way of handling nature, 
there is the faithful way of handling nature, there is 
the G reek way of handling nature , there is the 
m agical way of handling nature. In all these three 

20 last the eye is on the object, but with a difference ; 
i n the faithfu l way of handling nature, the eye is on 
the object, and that is all you can say ; in the Greek, 
the eye is on the object, but lightness and brightness 
are added ; in the magical, the eye is on the object, 



wacksen klingend empor am Ftisse der Bdiinie ; " and so on. 
Now that stroke of the Ao/ie Pilze, the great funguses, would 
have been impossible to the tact and delicacy of a born lover of 
nature like the Celt, and could only have come from a German 
who has hineinshidirt himself into natural magic. It is a crying 
false note, which carries us at once out of the world of nature- 
magic and the breath of the woods, into the world of theatre- 
magic and the smell of gas and orange-peel. 



98 NA TURE IN ENGLISH FOE TR V. 

but charm and magic are added. _J[nJjieco nven tioaaL 
w ay of handling nature, the eye is not on the object ; 
what that means we all know, we have only to think 
of our eighteenth-century poetry : — 

" As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night" — 5 

to call up any number of instances. Latin poetry 
supplies plenty of instances too ; if we put this from 
Propertius's Hylas : — 

, . . ' ' manus heroum .... 

Mollia camposita litora fronde tegit " — lO 

side by side the line of Theocritus by which it was 

suggested : — 

we get at the same moment a good specimen both of 
the conventional and of the Greek way of handling 15 
nature. But from our own poetry we may get speci- 
mens of the Greek way of handling nature, as well as 
of the conventional : for instance, Keats's : — 

" What little town, by river or seashore, 

Or mountain-built with quiet citadel, 20 

Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn ? " 

is Greek, as Greek as a thing from Homer or The- 
ocritus ; it is composed with the eye on the object, a 
radiancy and light clearness being added. German 
poetry abounds in specimens of the faithful way of 25 
handling nature ; an excellent example is to be found 
in the stanzas called Zueignung, prefixed to Goethe's 
poems ; the morning walk, the mist, the dew, the 



NA TURE IN ENGLISH POE TE V. 99 

sun, are as faithful as they can be, they are given 
with the eye on the object, but there the merit of 
the work, as a handling of nature, stops ; neither 
Greek radiance nor Celtic magic is added ; the power 
5 of these is not what gives the poem in question its 
merit, but a power of quite another kind, a power of 
moral and spiritual emotion. But the power of Greek 
radiance Goethe could give to his handling of nature, 
and nobly too, as any one who will read his Wandererj 

10 — the poem in which a wanderer falls in with a 
peasant woman and her child by their hut, built out 
of the ruins of a temple near Cuma, — may see. Only 
the power of natural magic Goethe, does not, I think, 
give ; whereas Keats passes at will from the Greek 

15 power to that power which is, as I say, Celtic ; from 
his : — 

" What little town, by river or seashore " — 



to his 



or his 



White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine, 
Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves " — 



. . . " magic casements, opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn" — 

in which the very same note is struck as in those 
25 extracts which I quoted from Celtic romance, and 

struck with authentic and unmistakable poAver. 

Shakspeare, in handling nature, touches this Celtic 

note so exquisitely, that perhaps one is inclined to 

be always looking for the Celtic note in him, and not 
30 to recognise his Greek note when it comes. But if 

one attends well to the difference between the two 



I oo NA TURE IN ENGLISH POE TR Y. 

notes, and bears in mind, to guide one, such things 
as Virgil's '' moss-grown springs and grass softer than 
sleep ": — 

" Muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba " — 

as his charming flower-gatherer, who : — 5 

" Pallentes violas et summa papavera carpens 

Narcissum et florem jungit bene olentis anethi " — 

as his quinces and chestnuts : — 

. . . " cana legam tenera lanugine mala 

Castaneasque nuces " lo 

then, I think, we shall be disposed to say that in 
Shakspeare's : — 

" I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, 
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, 
Quite over-canopied with lucious woodbine, 15 

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine " — 

it is mainly a Greek note which is struck. Then, 
again in his : — 

" look how the floor of heaven 

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold ! " — 20 

we are at the very point of transition from the Greek 
note to the Celtic ; there is the Greek clearness and 
brightness, with the Celtic aerialness and magic com- 
ing in. Then we have the sheer, inimitable Celtic 
note in passages like this : — 25 

" Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead, 
By paved fountain or by rushy brook, 
Or in the beached margent of the sea " — ■ 



■^1 

NATURE IN ENGLISH POETRY. loi 

or this, the last I will quote : — 

" The moon shines bright. In such a night as this, 
When the wind did gently kiss the trees, 
And they did make no noise, in such a night 
5 Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls — 

" in such a night 

Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew — 

* ' in such a night 

Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand, 
lo Upon the zvild sea-banks, and waved her love 

To come again to Carthage." 

And those last lines of all are so drenched and in- 
toxicated with the fairy-dew of that natural magic 
which is our theme, that I cannot do better than end 
15 with them. — On the Study of Celtic Literature, ed. 
1895, pp. 120-128. 



Ipoetr)^ and Science* 

The grand power of poetry is its interpretative 
power ; by which I mean, not a power of drawing out 
in black and white an explanation of the mystery of 
the universe, but the pow er of so deali ng with things 
as tnj^waj£en_ in us a wonderfu l ly full, new, and inti- e, 
matej ense of them , and of nnr Tdatiam;-with— fhpm 
When this sense is awakened in u s, as to objects with- 
■QUt^us ^e fee l_mirselves _t£L be in con tact^ with the 
ess ential natur^ -of-thos^-obj^^p ;, to b e n o l ong ef-4^€:i 
wildered and Ojipressed-by them ^ but to have their lo 



secret, and to be in harmony with the m ; and this 
j £eling _calms and satisfies n^ ? s ^in other_c an. Poetry, 
indeed, interprets in another way besides this ; but 
one of its twCL Wnys f>f interpreting , of pvprrisi ng its 
highest power, is_by; _awakening t his sense in us, 1 15 
will not now inquire whether this sense is illusive, 
whether it can be proved not to be illusive, whether 
it does absolutely make us possess the real nature of 
things ; all I say is, that poetry can awaken it in us, 
and that to awaken it is one of the highest powers of 20 
poetry. The inte rpretations of science do not givejis_^ 
this intimate sensiZQEobJi^^^ the interpretation s o f-^ 
poetry give it ; they appeal to a limited faculty and 
"not to tHelvhoTe Sran: — ftrs-notirirmseus-or^avenxiisli 



or Uuvier^wliogives us the true sense of animal s , or 2 .s 
-'watefrtjr'pIantsT^o seizes their secret for us, who 



POETRY AND SCIENCE. 103 

makes us participate in their life ; it is Shakspeare, 

with his 

" daffodils 

That come before the swallow dares, and take c^^Tii—^*. 

5 The winds of March with beauty ; " 

it is Wordsworth, with his 

' ' voice .... heard ^\-tJ^J_jL^ 

In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird, 

Breaking the silence of the seas '^^"'^yb^ 

10 Among the farthest Hebrides ; " v 

it is Keats, with his 

*' moving waters at their priestlike task 
Of cold ablution round Earth's human shores ; " 

it is Chateaubriand, with his, ''^ cime indeterminee des 
isforets J " it is Senancour, with his mountain birch-tree : 
^' Cette ^corce blanche^ lisse et crevassee j cette tige agreste j 
ces branches qui s'tncltnent vers la terre ; la 7nobilite des 
feuilles^ et tout cet abafidon^ simplicite de la nature^ atti- 
tude des deserts.'' — Essay Sy I., ed. 1896, pp. 81-82. 



Xiterature m\b Sctence. 

Pr actical people talk with a smile of Plato and of 
hisabs olute ideas ; and it is impossible to deny that 
Plato's ideas do often seem unpractical and impracti- 



cable,~and especially when one views them m con- 



nexion with ^le lifeof a great work-a-day world like 5 



the Uni ted S tates, The necessary staple of the life 
of siich_a woiid.Pla to regards with di^dam : handi- 
c raft and _Jrad e and the workin g__pr ofessions he 
regards with disdain ; but what becomes of the life of 



ani ndustrial modern com munjtyjljj^oi i take handi- lo 
craft and trade and the wor king p rofessions out of it ? 
The bas e mechanic a rts an d handicrafts^ sa ys Plato, 
bring about a natural wea knes s in the principle of 
excellence in a man, so tlialJbL£_ jcannQt govern the 
ignoble^^rowths in him, but nurses them, and cannot 15 
understand fostering any other. Those who exercise""' 
such arts and trades, as they have their bodies, he 
says marred, by their vulgar businesses, so they have 
their souls, too, bowed and broken by them. And if 
one of these uncomely people has a mind to seek self- 20 
culture and philosophy, Plato compares him to a bald 
little tinker, who has scraped together money, and 
has got his release from service, and has had a bath, 
and bought a new coat, and is rigged out like a bride- 
groom about to marry the daughter of his master who 25 
has fallen into poor and helpless estate. 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 105 

Nor do the working professions fare any better than 
trade at the hands of Plato. He draws for us an 
inimitable picture of the working lawyer, and of his 
life of bondage ; he shows how this bondage from his 
5 youth up has stunted and warped him, and made him 
small and crooked of soul, encompassing him with 
difficulties which he is not man enough to rely on 
justice and truth as means to encounter, but has 
recourse, for help out of them, to falsehood and 

10 wrong. And so, says Plato, this poor creature is 

bent and broken, and grows up from boy to man 

without a particle of soundness in him, although 

exceedingly smart and clever in his own esteem. 

One cannot refuse to admire the artist who draws 

15 these pictures. But we say to ourselves that his ideas 
show the influence of a primitive and obsolete order 
of things, when the warrior caste and the priestly 
caste were alone in honour, and the humble work of 
the world was done by slaves. We have now changed 

20 all that; the modern majority consists in work, as 
Emerson declares ; and in work, we may add, princi- 
pally of such plain and dusty kind as the work of 
cultivators of the ground, handicraftsmen, men of 
trade and business, men of the working professions. 

25 Above all is this true in a great industrious com- 
munity such as that of the United States. 

Now education, many people go on to say, is still 
mainly governed by the ideas of men like Plato, who 
lived when the warrior caste and the priestly or 

30 philosophical class were alone in honour, and the 
really useful part of the community were slaves. It 
is an education fitted for persons of leisure in such 



lo6 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 

a community. This education passed from Greece 
and Rome to the feudal communities of Europe, 
where also the warrior caste and the priestly caste 
were alone held in honour, and where the really 
useful and working part of the community, though 5 
not nominally slaves as in the pagan world, were 
practically not much better off than slaves, and not 
more seriously regarded. And how absurd it is, 
people end by saying, to inflict this education upon 
an industrious modern community, where very few lo 
indeed are persons of leisure, and the mass to be con- 
sidered has not leisure, but is bound, for its own great 
good, and for the great good of the world at large, to 
plain labour and to industrial pursuits, and the edu- 
cation in question tends necessarily to make men dis- 15 
satisfied with these pursuits and unfitted for them ! 

That is what it said. So far I must defend Plato, 
as to plead that his view of education and studies is 
in the general, as it seems to me, sound enough, and 
fitted for all sorts and conditions of men, whatever 20 
their pursuits may be. " An intelligent man," says __ 
Plato, " will prize those studies whi ch result in his 
"soul get tmg soberness, righteousness, and ^ y^^flprfj 
5i^-wili less value the others." I cannot conside r 
that a bad description of th e aim of education, and of 25 
the motives which should govern us in the choice 
of studies, w hether we are preparing ourselves for 
a hereditary seat in the English House of Lords or 
for the pork trade in Chicago. 

Still I admit that Plato's world was not ours, that 30 
his scorn of trade and handicraft is fantastic, that he 
had no conception of a great industrial community 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 107 

such as that of the United States, and that such 
a community must and will shape its education to 
suit its own needs. If the usual education handed 
down to it from the past does not suit it, it will cer- 
5 tainly before long drop this and try another. The 
usual education in the past has been mainly literary. 
The question is whether the studies which were long 
supposed to be the best for all of us are practically 
the best now ; whether others are not better. The 

10 tyranny of the past, many think, weighs on us injuri- 
ously in the predominance given to letters in educa-. 
tion. The question is raised whether, to meet the 
needs of our modern life, the predominance ought 
not now to pass^from letters to science ; and naturally 

15 the question is nowhere raised with more energy than 
here in the United States. The design of abasing 
what is called *' mere literary instruction and educa- 
tion," and of exalting what is called " sound, ex- 
tensive, and practical scientific knowledge," is, in this 

20 intensely modern world of the United States, even 
more perhaps than in Europe, a very popular design, 
and makes great and rapid progress. 

I am going to ask whether the present movement 
for ousting letters from their old predominance in 

25 education, and for transferring the predominance in 
education to the natural sciences, whether this brisk 
and flourishing movement ought to prevail, and 
whether it is likely that in the end it really will pre- 
vail. An objection may be raised which I will antici- 

30 pate. My own studies have been almost wholly in 
letters, and my visits to the field of the natural 
sciences have been very slight and inadequate, al- 



io8 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 

though those sciences have always strongly moved my 
curiosity. A man of letters, it will perhaps be said, is 
not competent to discuss the comparative merits of 
letters and natural science as means of education. 
To this objection I reply, first of all, that his incom- 5 
petence, if he attempts the discussion but is really 
incompetent for it, will be abundantly visible ; nobody 
will be taken in ; he will have plenty of sharp 
observers and critics to save mankind from that dan- 
ger. But the line I am going to follow is, as you will lo 
soon discover, so extremely simple, that perhaps it 
may be followed without failure even by one who for 
a more ambitious line of discussion would be quite 
incompetent. 

Some of you may possibly remember a phrase of 15 
mine which has been the object of a good deal of 
comment ; an observation to the effect that in our 
culture, the aim being io knoiv ourselves and the worlds 
we have, as t he means to this end, io knoiv the best 
which has been thought and said in the world. A man of 20 



science, who is also an excellent writer and the very 
prince of debaters, Professor Huxley, in a discourse 
at the opening of Sir Josiah Mason's college at Bir- 
mingham, laying hold of this phrase, expanded it by 
quoting some more words of mine, which are these : 25 
" The civilised world is to be regarded as now being, 
for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great con- 
federation, bound to a joint action and working to a 
common result ; and whose members have for their 
proper outfit a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and 30 
Eastern antiquity, and of one another. Special local 
and temporary advantages being put out of account, 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 109 

that modern nation will in the intellectual and spirit- 
ual sphere make most progress, which most thoroughly 
carries out this programme." 

Now on my phrase, thus enlarged, Professor Hux- 
5 ley remarks that when I speak of the above-mentioned 
knowledge as enabling us to know ourselves and the 
world, I assert literature to contain the materials 
which sufifice for thus making us know ourselves and 
the world. But it is not by any means clear, says he, 

10 that after having learnt all which ancient and modern 
literatures have to tell us, we have laid a sufficiently 
broad and deep foundation for that criticism of life, 
that knowlege of ourselves and the world, which con- 
stitutes culture. On the contrary. Professor Huxley 

15 declares that he finds himself " wholly unable to 
admit that either nations or individuals will really 
advance, if their outfit draws nothing from the stores 
of physical science. An army without weapons of 
precision, and with no particular base of operations, 

20 might more hopefully enter upon a campaign on the 
Rhine, than a man, devoid of a knowledge of what 
physical science has done in the last century, upon a 
criticism of life.'* 

This shows how needful it is for those who are to 

25 discuss any matter together, to have a common under- 
standing as to the sense of the terms they employ, — 
how needful, and how difficult. What Professor 
Huxley says, implies just the reproach which is so 
often brought ag ainst the study o i^Mdlfi Jeffrey , ns they ^ 

30 are called : that the study is an elegant one, but slight 
and ineffectual ; a smattering of Gr eek and Latin and^ ^ 
other ornamental things, Qf~littTe use for any one 



110 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 

whose obje ct is to p;et at truth, and to be a practical 

man. So^^ too, . M. Renan talks af the- * - superdciaL 

"TTrT manism " of, a school-course which treats ns. as if 

we were all going to be poets, writers, preachers^ 

orators7^nd he opposes this Jiumanism to positive 5 _ 
-surence, of t'he'critical search after truth. And there 
is always a tendency in those who are remonstrating 
against the predominance of letters in education, to 
iinderstand by l etfert; hdlf^ Ifff^e^^ f ^ n d by AV/r . r / i V/^ i 'T 
a superficial hu manism, the o pposite o f science or true 10 _ 
knowledge. 

1But whenwe talk of knowing Greek and Roman 
antiquity, for instance, which is the knowledge people-^ 
Tiave called the humanities, I for my part mean a 
Jcn owledge w hich i^_sDmethIn^ -mQxe_jhanlj _juper- 15 
ficial humanism, mainly decorative. ^^ call all teach- 
~ing scientific y" says Wolf, the critic of Homer, ^* which 
-4s^'systematically laid out and followed up to its origi- ~ 



_aaLsourc£s» For example : a knowledge of claisical 
antiquity is scientific when the remains of classical 20 
antiquity are correctly studied in the original lan- 
guages." There can be no doubt that Wolf is per- 
fectly right ; that all learning is scientific which is 
systematically laid out and followed up to its original 
sources, and that a genuine humanism is scientific. 25 

When I speak of knowing Greek and Roman an- 
tiquity, therefore, as a help to knowing ourselves and 
the world, I mean more than a knowledge of so much 
vocabulary, so much grammar, so m nny pnrtionq-p^ — 
authors_jn_t he Greek and Latin languages, I mean 30 
knowing the Greeks and R( ) in. l T"^, ^"^^ ^^^^i'- ^'f^ '^^'^ — - 
genius, and.j diat-4fe cv w e re and did in the world \ 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. in 

what we get from them, and what is its value. That, 
at least, is the ideal ; and when we talk of endeavour- 
ing to know Greek and Roman antiq^it y^ as a help to^ 
knowing ourse lves and the world, we mean enHeaymir- 
5 ing so to know them as to satisfy this ideal, however 

mu«"h W'^j'Tgyr^fflf^^^ sh'^rt of it. ~ 

The same also as to knowing our own and other 
modern nations, with the like aim of getting to under- 
stand ourselves and the world. To know the best 

lo that has been thought and said by the modern nations, 
is to know, says Professor Huxley, *' only what modern 
literatures have to tell us ; it is the criticism of life 
contained in modern literature." And yet " the dis- 
tinctive character of our times," he urges, *' lies in 

15 the vast and constantly increasing part which is 
played by natural knowledge." And how, therefore, 
can a man, devoid of knowledge of what physical 
science has done in the last century, enter hopefully 
upon a criticism of modern life ? 

20 Let us, I say, be agreed about the meaning of the 
terms we are using. I talk of knowing the best which 
has been thought and uttered in the world ; Professor 
Huxley says this means knowing literature. Litera- 
ture is a large word ; it may mean everything written 

25 with letters or printed in a book. Euclid's Elements 
and Newton's Frincipla are thus literature. All 
knowledge that reaches us through books is literature. 
But by literature Professor Huxley means belles lettres. 
He means to make me say, that knowing the best 

30 which has been thought and said by the modern 
nations is knowing their belles lettres and no more. 
And this is no sufficient equipment, he argues, for 



112 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 

a criticism of modern life. But as I do not mean, by 
knowing ancient Rome, knowing merely more or less 
of Latin belles lettres, and taking no account of Rome's 
military, and political, and legal, and administrative 
work in the world ; and as, by knowing ancient 5 
Greece, I understand knowing her as the giver of 
Greek art, and the guide to a free and right use of 
reason and to scientific method, and the founder of our 
mathematics and physics and astronomy and biology, 
— I understand knowing her as all this, and not lo 
merely knowing certain Greek poems, and histories, 
and treatises, and speeches, — so as to the knowledge 
of modern nations also. By knowing modern nations, 
I mean not merely knowing their belles lettres, but 
knowing also what has been done by such men as 15 
Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin. ** Our ances- 
tors learned," says Professor Huxley, "that the earth 
is the centre of the visible universe, and that man is 
the cynosure of things terrestrial ; and more especially 
was it inculcated that the course of nature has no 20 
fixed order, but that it could be, and constantly was, 
altered." But for us now, continues Professor Hux- 
ley, *' the notions of the beginning and the end of the 
world entertained by our forefathers are no longer 
credible. It is very certain that the earth is not the 25 
chief body in the material universe, and that the world 
is not subordinated to man's use. It is even more cer- 
tain that nature is the expression of a definite order, 
with which nothing interferes." "And yet," he cries, 
" the purely classical education advocated by the 30 
representatives of the humanists in our day gives no 
inkling of all this ! " 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 113 

In due place and time I will just touch upon that 
vexed question of classical education ; but at present 
the question is as to what is meant by knowing the 
best which modern nations have thought and said. 
5 It is not knowing their belles lettres merely which is 
meant. To know Italian belles lettres is not to know 
Italy, and to know English belles lettres is not to 
know England. Into knowing Italy and England 
there comes a great deal more, Galileo and Newton 

10 amongst it. The reproach of being a superficial 
humanism, a tincture of belles lettres, may attach rightly 
enough to some other disciplines ; but to the par- 
ticular discipline recommended when I proposed 
knowing the best that has been thought and said in 

15 the world, it does not apply. In that best I certainly 
include what in modern times has been thought and 
said by the great observers and knowers of nature. 

There is, therefore, really no question between 
Professor Huxley and me as to whether knowing the 

20 great results of the modern scientific study of nature 
is not required as a part of our culture, as well as 
knowing the products of literature and art. But to 
follow the processes by which those results are 
reached, ought, say the friends of physical science, to 

25 be made the staple of education for the bulk of man- 
kind. And here there does arise a question between 
those whom Professor Huxley calls with playful sar- 
casm " the Levites of culture," and those whom» the 
poor humanist is sometimes apt to regard as its 

30 Nebuchadnezzars. 

The great results of the scientific investigation of 
nature we are agreed upon knowing, but how much 



114 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 

of our study are we bound to give to the processes by 
which those results are reached ? The results have 
their visible bearing on human life. But all the pro- 
cesses, too, all the items of fact by which those results 
are reached and established, are interesting. _A1U— 
lrnow1pjJ£g_j s_ inter?s<^ing ^o ^ '^^^'g^ rmr>^ inH thf^ 
knowledge of nature is interesting to all men. It is 

"veryThteresting to know, that, from the albuminaiis 

"white of the egg, the chick injhe egg gets t]ie_rnMerLals 

for its flesh, bones, blood, and feathers ; while, from lo 
the fatty yelk of the egg, it gets the heat and energy 
which enable it at length to break its shell and begin 
the world. It is less interesting, perhaps, but still it 
is interesting, to know that when a taper burns, the 
wax is converted into carbonic acid and water. 15 
Moreover, it is quite true that the habit of dealing 
with facts, which is given by the study of nature, is, 
as the friends of physical science praise it for being, 
an excellent discipline. The appeal, in the study of 
nature, is constantly to observation and experiment ; 20 
not only is it said that the thing is so, but we can be 
made to see that it is so. Not only does a man tell 
us that when a taper burns the wax is converted into 
carbonic acid and water, as a man may tell us, if he 
likes, that Charon is punting his ferry-boat on the 25 
river Styx, or that Victor Hugo is a sublime poet, or 
Mr. Gladstone the most admirable of statesmen ; but 
we are made to see that the conversion into carbonic 
acid and water does actually happen. This reality of 
naturaL knowledge- it-is,- which makes the iriends of^3o- 

physic al scjence contrast it, as a knowledge of things, 

wit h the humanist's know ledge, which is, theyi-sayHt 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 1 15 

__k nowledge of words ^ And ^ence Professor Huxley 
is moved to lay it down that, **for the purpose of 
■ altaming real culture, an exclusively scientific educa- 
fTorTiFat least as effectual as an e^xclusiyelyi literary 
_5_£ducation." And a certain President of the Section 
for Mechanical Science in the British Association is, 
in Scripture phrase, " very bold," and declares that if 
a man, in his mental training, "has substituted litera- 
ture and history for natural science, he has chosen 

10 the less useful alternative." But whether we go these 
lengths or not, we must all admit that in natural 
science the habit gained of dealing with facts is a 
most valuable discipline, and that every one should 
have some experience of it. 

15 More than this, however, is demanded by the 
reformers. It is proposed to make the training in 
natural science the main part of education, for the 
great majority of mankind at any rate. And here, I 
confess, I part company with the friends of physical 

20 science, with whom up to this point I have been 
agreeing. In differing from them, however, I wish to 
proceed with the utmost caution and diffidence. The 
smallness of my own acquaintance with the disciplines 
of natural science is ever before my mind, and I am 

25 fearful of doing these disciplines an injustice. The 
ability and pugnacity of the partisans of natural 
science make them formidable persons to contradict. 
The tone of tenative inquiry, which befits a being of 
dim faculties and bounded knowledge, is the tone I 

30 would wish to take and not to depart from. At 
present it seems to me, that those who are for giving 
to natural knowledge, as they call it, the chief place 



Ii6 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 

in the education of the majority of mankind, leave 
one important thing out of their account : the con- 
stitution of human nature. But I put this forward on 
the strength of some facts not at all recondite, very 
far from it; facts capable of being stated in the 5 
simplest possible fashion, and to which, if I so state 
them, the man of science will, I am sure, be willing to 
allow their due weight. 

Deny the facts altogether, I think, he hardly can. 
H e can hardly deny^lhat_i\dien- we set. ours£lv£s__tajii- 
enumerate the powers which go to thfiJiuildin^ 4Ap-o£~ 
"^tuman life, and say that they are the power of condu ct, 
the power~or iniellect and knowledge, the power-of— . 
beauty, and the power of social life a nd manners,— he ^ 
""can hardly deny that this scheme, though drawn in 15 
rough and plain lines enough, and not pretending to 
scientific exactness, does yet give a fairly true repre- 
sentation of the matter. Human nature is built up by 
these powers ; we have the need for them all. When 
we havej^ghtiyjiiet a-ndatijusteT^the claims ol-th^w-ao 
all, we shall then be in a fair_way for getting soberness 
and righteousness, with wisdom. This is evident 
enough, and the friends of physicaTscience would ad- 
mit it. 

But perhaps they may not have sufficiently observed 25 
another thing : namely, that the several powers just 
mentioned are not isolated, but there is, in the ge ner- 
ality of mankind, a perpefuaTtendencyTo refate them_^ 
Tme to^an other in divers ways. With one such way of 
reTafmgThem I am particularly concerned now. Fol- 30 
lowing our instinct for intellect and knowledge, we 
acquire pieces of knowledge ; and presently, in the 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. n? 

generality of men, there arises the desire -t€h- relate 
thes e pieces of knowledge to our sense for conduct, to 
ou^jens£_faii-bjeautyy^^^^^^aft d there i s-^weariness and-d^s* — 
satisfaction if the desire is baulked. Now in this 
5 desire lies, I think, the strength of that hold which 

_ letters'ha v^u pun u s^ 

All knowledge is, as I said just now, interesting ; 
and even items of knowledge which from the nature of 
the case cannot well be related, but must stand isolated 

lo in our thoughts, have their interest. Even lists of ex- 
ceptions have their interest. If we are studying Greek 
accents, it is interesting to know \.\vz.\. pais and/^^, and 
some other monosyllables of the same form of declen- 
sion, do not take the circumflex upon the last syllable 

15 of the genitive plural, but vary, in this respect, from 
the common rule. If we are studying physiology, it is 
interesting to know that the pulmonary artery carries 
dark blood and the pulmonary vein carries bright 
blood, departing in this respect from the common 

20 rule for the division of labour between the veins and 
the arteries. But every one knows how we seek natur- 
ally to combine the pieces of our knowledge together, 
to bring them under general rules, to relate them to 
principles ; and how unsatisfactory and tiresome it 

25 would be to go on for ever learning lists of exceptions, 
or accumulating items of fact which must stand 
isolated. 

Well, that same need of relating our knowledge, 
which operates here within the sphere of our knowl- 

30 edge itself, we shall find operating, also, outside that 
sphere. We experience, as we go on learning and 
knowing, — the vast majority of us experience, — the 



Ii8 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 

need of relating what we have learnt and known to the 
sense which we have in us for conduct, to the sense 
which we have in us for beauty. 

A certain Greek prophetess of Mantineia in Arca- 
dia, Diotima by name, once explained to the philoso- 5 
pher Socrates that love, and impulse, and bent of all 
kinds, is, in fact, nothing else but the desire in men 
that good should for ever be present to them. This 
desire for good, Diotima assured Socrates, is our fun- 
damental desire, of which fundamental desire every lo 
impulse in us is only some one particular form. And 
therefore this fundamental desire it is, I suppose, — this 
desire in men that good should be for ever present to 
them, — which acts in us when we feel the impulse for 
relating our knowledge to our sense for conduct and 15 
to our sense for beauty. At any rate, with men in 
general the instinct exists. Such is human nature. 
And the instinct, it will be admitted, is innocent, and 
human nature is preserved by our following the lead 
of its innocent instincts. Therefore, in seeking to 20 
gratify this instinct in question, we are following the 
instinct of self-preservation in humanity. 

But, no do ubt, some ki nds of knowledge cannot be 
made to directly serve tlielnstmct m question, cannot 
"Be directly related" tojHe^ense_f or ..b-Cauiy, to-4h^^5-- 



hese are instrument-knowl- 



edges ; t hey lead on to o ther knowledges, which can. 



A man who-passes_his life in-in^tu^fH^ftt-ittowledgfis ■ 

is a sp ecialists-— They may be invaluable as instru- 
ments to something beyond, for those who have the 30 
gift thus to employ them ; and they may be disci- 
plines in themselves wherein it is useful for every one 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. I19 

to have some schooling. But it is inconceivable that 
the gen erality of men sli ould^pass all their m^niaJ 
Tire wilh Greek accents or with formal jQg.ic. My 



friend Professor Sylvester, who is one of the first 
5 mathematicians in the world, holds transcendental 
doctrines as to the virtue of mathematics, but those 
doctrines are not for common men. In the very 
Senate House and heart of our English Cambridge 
I once ventured, though not without an apology for 

10 my profaneness, to hazard the opinion that for the 
majority of mankind a little of mathematics, even, 
goes a long way. Of course this is quite consistent 
with their being of immense importance as an instru- 
ment to something else ; but it is the few who have 

15 the aptitude for thus using them, not the bulk of 
mankind. 

The natural scienc^s^ do notj^ however, stand _ 
on the same footing -with these^nstrument-knowl- ~" 
edges. Experience shows us that the generality of 

20 men will find more interest in learning that, when 
a taper burns, the wax is converted into carbonic 
acid and water, or in learning the explanation of the 
phenomenon of dew, or in learning how the circula- 
tion of the blood is carried on, than they find in 

25 learning that the genitive plural of pais and/^^ does 

not take the c ircumfle x on the termina tion. And one 

piece of natural knowledge is added to another, and 

others are added to that, and at last we come to 

propositions so interesting as Mr. Darwin 's-iamous— 

30 proposition that '*our ancestor was a hairy quadruped 



furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably 
arboreal in his habits." Or we come to propositions 



I20 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 

of such reach and magnitude as those which Profes- 
sor Huxley delivers, when he says that the notions 
of our forefathers about the beginning and the end of 
the world were all wrong, and that nature is the expres- 
sion of a definite order with which nothing interferes. 5 

Interesting, indeed, these results of science are, 
important they are, and we should all of us be 
acquainted with them. But what I now wish you to 
mark is, that we are still, when they are propounded 
to us and we receive them, we are still in the sphere 10 
of intellect and knowledge. And for the generality 
of men there will be found, I say, to arise, when they 
have duly taken in the proposition that their ancestor 
was "a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and 
pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits," there 15 
will be found to arise an invincible desire to relate 

to the sense in us for beauty. But this the men of 
"science will not do for us, and will hardly even pro- 
fess to do. They will give us other pieces of knowl- 20 
edge, other facts, about other animals and their 
ancestors, or about plants, or .about stones, or about 
stars ; and they may finally bring us to those great 
" genejral^conceptiorrs of- the universe, which ar^ — - 
forced upon us all," says Professor Huxley, " by the 25 
progress of physical science." But still it will be 
knowledge only which they give us ; knowledge not 
put for us into relation with our sense for conduct, 
our sense for beauty, and touched with emotion by 
being so put ; not thus put for us, and therefore, to 30 
the majority of mankind, after a certain while, un- 
satisfying, wearying. 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 12 1 

Not to the born naturalist, I admit. But what do 
we mean by a born naturalist ? We mean a man in 
whom the zeal for observing nature is so uncom- 
monly strong and eminent, that it marks him off from 
5 the bulk of mankind. Such a man will pass his life 
happily in collecting natural knowledge and reasoning 
upon it, and will ask for nothing, or hardly anything, 
more. I have heard it said that the sagacious and 
admirable naturalist whom we lost not very long ago, 

lo Mr. Darwin, once owned to a friend that for his part 
he did not experience the necessity for two things 
which most men find so necessary to them, — religion 
and poetry ; science and the domestic affections, he 
thought, were enough. To a born naturalist, I can 

15 well understand that this should seem so. So ab- 
sorbing is his occupation with nature, so strong his 
love for his occupation, that he goes on acquiring 
natural knowledge and reasoning upon it, and has 
little time or inclination for thinking about getting 

20 it related to the desire in man for conduct, the desire 
in man for beauty. He relates it to them for himself 
as he goes along, so far as he feels the need ; and he 
draws from the domestic affections all the additional 
solace necessary. But then Darwins are extremely 

25 rare. Another great and admirable master of natural 
knowledge, Faraday, was a Sandemanian. That is to 
say, he related his knowledge to his instinct for con- 
duct and to his instinct for beauty, by the aid of 
that respectable Scottish sectary, Robert Sandeman. 

30 And so strong, in general, is the demand of religion 
and poetry to have their share in a man, to associate 
themselves with his knowing, and to relieve and 



122 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 

rejoice it, that probably, for one man amongst us with 
the disposition to do as Darwin did in this respect, 
tliere are at least fifty with the disposition to do as 
Faraday. 

Education lays hold upon us, in fact, by satisfying 5 
tliis demand. Professor Huxley holds up to scorn 
mediaeval education, with its neglect of Uieknowledge-Iil 
of^Tture, i^sjoyerty even of literary studies,— its 



I 



formal logic devoted to " showing how and why that_ 

which the Church said was true must be true." But lo 
the great mediaeval universities were not brought into 
being, we may be sure, by the zeal for giving a 
jejune and contemptible education. Kings have been 
their nursing fathers, and queens have been their nurs- 
ing mothers, but not for this. The mediaeval uru2_is. 
_ versjties came into being, because the— ^up^posed — 
knowledge, delivered by Scripture and the Church, so _ 
deeply engaged men's hearts, by so simply, easily^ and 



powerfuTTy relating itself to their desire for conduct, 

their de'sTfe Tor beauty. -j\ll other knowledge was 20 

dominated by this supposed knowledge and-was ^ub-^ 

nofdmated to it, because of the surpassing strength of 
the hold which it gained upon the affections of men, 
by allying itself profoundly with their sense for con- 
duct, their sense for beauty. 25 

But now, says Professor Huxley, conceptions of the 
universe fatal to the notions held by our forefathers 
have been forced upon us by physical science. 
Grant to him that they are thus fatal, that the new 
conceptions must and will soon become current 30 
everywhere, and that every one will finally perceive 
them to be fatal to the beliefs of our forefathers. The 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. I23 

need of humane letters, as they are truly called, 



because they serventHeTparamount "desire in men that 
good should be for ever present to them, — the need of 
humane letters to establish a relation between^jhe 
5 new conceptions, and our instinct for beauty, our 
instmct for conductjJ^s_jin]^L_the--more^-v-isible^ The. 
Middle Age could do without humane letters, as it 
could do without the study of nature, because its sup- 
posed knowledge was made to engage its emotions so 

10 powerfully. Grant that the supposed knowledge dis- 
appears, its power of being made to engage the 
emotions will of course disappear along with it, — but 
the emotions themselves, and their claim to be 
engaged and satisfied, will remain. Now if we find by 

15 experience that humane letters have an undeniable 
power of engaging the emotions, the importance of hu- 
mane letters in a man's training becomes not less, but 
greater, in proportion to the success of modern science 
in extirpating what it calls "mediaeval thinking." 

20 Have humane letters, then, have poetry and elo- 
quence, the power here attributed to them of engaging 
the emotions, and do they exercise it ? And if they 
have it and exercise it, how do they exercise it, so as 
to exert an influence upon man's sense for conduct, 

^.5 his sense for beauty ? Finally, even if they both can 
and do exert an influence upon the senses in question, 
how are they to relate to them the results, — the 
modern results, — of natural science ? All these ques- 
tions may be asked. First, have poetry and eloquence 

30 the power of cal ling out the emotio ns? The appeal js^ 

— ttr experiencer"_Exp erien ce shows that for the vast- 
inajonty of men, for mankind in general, they have the 



124 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 

power. N ext, do they exercise itl—Jliey da -But- 
then^ow do they exercise it so as to affect man's 



"sense Tor conduct, his sense for beauty ? And this is 
perhaps a case for applying the Preacher's words : 
" Though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not 5 
find it ; yea, farther, though a wise man think to know 
it, yet shall he not be able to find it." ' Why should it 
be one thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to say, 
" Patience is a virtue," and quite another thing, in its 
effect upon the emotions, to say with Homer, lo 

tXtjtov yap Mo?pai dvfibv diaav dvdpcoTroLCiv — ^ 

*' for an enduring heart have the destinies appointed 
to the children of men"? Why should it be one 
thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to say with the 
pliilosopher Spinoza, Felicitas in eo consistit quod Jiomo i^ 
suum esse conservare potest — " Man's happiness consists 
in his being able to preserve his own essence," and 
quite another thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to 
say with the Gospel, " What is a man advantaged, if he 
gain the whole world, and lose himself, forfeit him- 20 
self ? " How does this difference of effect arise ? I 
cannot tell, and I am not much concerned to know ; 
the important thing is that it does arise, and that we 
can profit by it. But how, finally, are poetry and elo- 
quence to exercise the power of relating the modern 25 
results of natural science to man's instinct for conduct, 
his instinct for beauty ? And here again I answer 
tliat I do not know Jiow they will exercise it, but that 
they can and will exercise it I am sure. I do not 
mean tliat modern philosophical poets and modem 30 
^ Ecclesiastes, viii. 17. '^ Iliad, xxiv, 49. 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 125 

philosophical moralists are to come and relate for us, in 
express terms, the results of modern scientific research 
to our instinct for conduct, our instinct for beauty. 
But I mean that we shall find, as a matter of experi- 
5 ence, if we know the best that has been thought and 
uttered in the world, we shall find that the art and 
poetry and eloquence of men who lived, perhaps, long 
ago, who had the most limited natural knowledge, who 
had the most erroneous conceptions about many 

10 important matters, we shall find that this art, and 
poetry, and eloquence, have in fact not only the 
power of refreshing and delighting us, they have also 
the power, — such is the strength and worth, in essen- 
tials, of their authors' criticism of life, — they have a 

15 fortifying, and elevating, and quickening, and sugges- 
tive power, capable of wonderfully helping us to 
relate the results of modern science to our need for 
conduct, our need for beauty. Homer's conceptions 
of the physical universe were, I imagine, grotesque ; 

20 but really, under the shock of hearing from modern 
science that " the world is not subordinated to man's 
use, and that man is not the cynosure of things terres- 
trial," I could, for my own part, desire no better com- 
fort than Homer's line which I quoted just now, 

25 rXrjrbv yap MoTpai 6viJ.bv dicrav dvOpuTOiaiv — 

" for an enduring heart have the destinies appointed to 
the children of men " ! 

And the more that men's minds are cleared, the 

more that the results of science are frankly accepted, 

30 the more that poetry and eloquence come to be 

received and studied as what in truth they really 



126 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 

are, — the criticism of life by gifted men, alive and 
active with extraordinary power at an unusual number 
of points ; — so much the more will the value of 
humane letters, and of art also, which is an utterance 
having a like kind of power with theirs, be felt and 5 
acknowledged, and their place in education be secured. 

Let us therefore, all of us, avoid indeed as much as 
possible any invidious comparison between the merits 
of humane letters, as means of education, and the 
merits of the natural sciences. But when some Presi- 10 
dent of a Section for Mechanical Science insists on 
making the comparison, and tells us that *'he who in 
his training has substituted literature and history for 
natural science has chosen the less useful alternative," 
let us make answer to him that the student of humane 15 
letters only, will, at least, know also the great general 
conceptions brought in by modern physical science ; 
for science, as Professor Huxley says, forces them 
upon us all. But the student of the natural sciences 
only, will, by our very hypothesis, know nothing of 20 
humane letters ; not to mention that in setting him- 
self to be perpetually accumulating natural knowledge, 
he sets himself to do what only specialists have in 
general the gift for doing genially. And so he will 
probably be unsatisfied, or at any rate incomplete, and 25 
even more incomplete than the student of humane 
letters only. 

I once mentioned in a school-report, how a young 
man in one of our English training colleges having to 
paraphrase the passage in Macbeth beginning, 30 

" Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased ?" 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 127 

turned this line into, '' Can you not wait upon the 
lunatic ? " And I remarked what a curious state of 
things it would be, if every pupil of our national 
schools knew, let us say, that the moon is two thou- 
5 sand one hundred and sixty miles in diameter, and 
thought at the same time that a good paraphrase for 

" Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased ? " 

was, *' Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" If one 
is driven to choose, I think I would rather have a 

10 young person ignorant about the moon's diameter, 
but aware that "Can you not wait upon the lunatic ?" 
is bad, than a young person whose education had 
been such as to manage things the other way. 

Or to go higher than the pupils of our national 

15 schools. I have in my mind's eye a member of our 
British Parliament who comes to travel here in 
America, who afterwards relates his travels, and who 
shows a really masterly knowledge of the geology of 
this great country and of its mining capabilities, but 

20 who ends by gravely suggesting that the United 
States should borrow a prince from our Royal Family, 
and should make him their king, and should create a 
House of Lords of great landed proprietors after the 
pattern of ours ; and then America, he thinks, would 

25 have her future happily and perfectly secured. 
Surely, in this case, the President of the Section for 
Mechanical Science would himself hardly say that 
our member of Parliament, by concentrating himself 
upon geology and mineralogy, and so on, and not 

30 attending to literature and history, had "chosen the 
more useful alternative." 



128 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 



1 



If then there is to be separation and option between 
humane letters on the one hand, and Uie natural 
sciences on the other, the great majority of mankind, 
all who have not exceptional and overpowering apti- 
tudes for the study of nature, would do well, I cannot 5 
but think, to choose to be educated in humane letters 
rather than in the natural sciences. Letters will call 
out their being at more points, will make them live 
more. 

I said that before I ended I would just touch on 10 
the question of classical education, and I will keep 
my word. Even if literature is to retain a large place 
in our education, yet Latin and Greek, say the friends 
of progress, will certainly have to go. Greek is the 
grand offender in the eyes of these gentlemen. The 15 
attackers of the established course of study think that 
against Greek, at any rate, they have irresistible argu- 
ments. Literature may perhaps be needed in educa- 
tion, they say ; but why on earth should it be Greek 
literature ? Why not French or German ? Nay, 20 
** has not an Englishman models in his own literature 
of every kind of excellence ? ' As before, it is not on 
any weak pleadings of my own that I rely for con- 
vincing the gainsayers ; it is on the constitution of 
human nature itself, and on the instinct of self-preser- 25 
vation in humanity. The instinct for beauty is set in 
human nature, as surely as the instinct for knowledge 
is set there, or the instinct for conduct. If the 
instinct for beauty is served by Greek literature and 
art as it is served by no other literature and art, 30 
we may trust to the instinct of self-preservation in 
humanity for keeping Greek as part of our culture. 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 129 

We may trust to it for even making the study of 
Greek more prevalent than it is now. Greek will 
come, I hope, some day to be studied more rationally 
than at present ; but it will be increasingly studied as 
5 men increasingly feel the need in them for beauty, 
and how powerfully Greek art and Greek literature 
can serve this need. Women will again study Greek, 
as Lady Jane Grey did ; I believe that in that chain 
of forts, with which the fair host of the Amazons are 

10 now engirdling our English universities, I find that 
here in America, in colleges like Smith College in 
Massachusetts, and Vassar College in the State of 
New York, and in the happy families of the mixed 
universities out West, they are studying it already. 

15 Defuit una viihi syvunetria prisca, — '' The antique 
symmetry was the one thing wanting to me," said 
Leonardo da Vinci ; and he was an Italian. I 
will not presume to speak for the Americans, but 
I am sure that, in the Englishman, the want of 

20 this admirable symmetry of the Greeks is a thou- 
sand times more great and crying than in any Italian. 
The results of the want show themselves most glar- 
ingly, perhaps, in our architecture, but they show 
themselves, also, in all our art. Fit details strictly com- 

25 binedy in view of a large general result nobly conceived ; 
that is just the beautiful symmetria prisca of the 
Greeks, and it is just where we English fail, where all 
our art fails. Striking ideas we have, and well- 
executed details we have ; but that high symmetry 

30 which, with satisfying and delightful effect, combines 
them, we seldom or never have. The glorious 
beauty of the Acropolis at Athens did not come 



130 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 



from single fine things stuck about on that hill, a 
statue here, a gateway there ;— no, it arose from all 
things being perfectly combined for a supreme total 
effect. What must not an Englishman feel about our 
deficiencies in this respect, as the sense for beauty, 5 
whereof this symmetry is an essential element, awakens 
and strengthens within him ! what will not one day be 
his respect and desire for Greece and its symnietria 
prisca, when the scales drop from his eyes as he walks 
the London streets, and he sees such a lesson in mean- 10 
ness as the Strand, for instance, in its true deformity ! 
But here we are coming to our friend Mr. Ruskin's 
province, and I will not intrude upon it, for he is its 
very sufficient guardian. 

And so we at last find, it seems, we find flowing in 15 
favour of the humanities the natural and necessary 
stream of things, which seemed against them when we 
started. The " hairy quadruped furnished with a tail 
and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits," 
this good fellow carried hidden in his nature, appar- 20 
ently, something destined to develop into a necessity 
for humane letters. Nay, more ; we seem finally to 
be even led to the further conclusion that our hairy 
ancestor carried in his nature, also, a necessity for 
Greek. 25 

And therefore, to say the truth, I cannot really 
think that humane letters are in much actual danger 
of being thrust out from their leading place in educa- 
tion, in spite of the array of authorities against them 
at this moment. So long as human nature is what it 30 
is, their attractions will remain irresistible. As with 
Greek, so with letters generally : they will some day 



1 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 13 1 

come, we may hope, to be studied more rationally, 
but they will not lose their place. What will happen 
will rather be that there will be crowded into educa- 
tion other matters besides, far too many ; there will 
5 be, perhaps, a period of unsettlement and confusion 
and false tendency; but letters will not in the end lose 
their leading place. If they lose it for a time, they 
will get it back again. We shall be brought back to 
them by our wants and aspirations. And a poor 

10 humanist may possess his soul in patience, neither 
strive nor cry, admit the energy and brilliancy of the 
partisans of physical science, and their present favour 
with the public, to be far greater than his own, and 
still have a happy faith that the nature of things works 

15 silently on behalf of the studies which he loves, and 
that, while we shall all have to acquaint ourselves with 
the great results reached by modern science, and to 
give ourselves as much training in its disciplines as we 
can conveniently carry, yet the majority of men will 

20 always require humane letters; and so much the more, 
as they have the more and the greater results of science 
to relate to the need in man for conduct, and to the 
need in him for beauty. — Discourses in America^ ed. 
1896, pp. 72-137- 



©jtorD an^ ipbUistinlsm, 

Several of the Essays which are here collected and 
reprinted had the good or the bad fortune to be much 
criticised at the time of their first appearance. I am 
not now going to inflict upon the reader a reply to 
those criticisms; for one or two explanations which are 5 
desirable, I shall elsewhere, perhaps, be able some day 
to find an opportunity ; but, indeed, it is not in my 
nature, — some of my critics would rather say, not in 
my power, — to dispute on behalf of any opinion, even 
my own, very obstinately. To _trv and approach truth 10 
on one side a fter another, n ot to st rive or cry, nor to _ 
persist in pressing forward, on any one side, with vio- 
i'ence'^nd self-will,— it_is only thus,_iL_s^ em_a_t^_me^ 
that mortals may hope to gain_a ny vision o f tVip myg, — 



terious Goddess, whom we s hall never see except in ^is 



outline, but only thus even in outlme. He who will 



do jTOthing b ut fight impetuousTyTowards her on his 
own, one, f avourite, particular line, is inevitably des- 
tined to run his head into the folds of the black robe 
in.whirh]jhp_[£^wrapppii- " 20" 

~ So it is not to reply to my critics that I write this 
preface, but to prevent a misunderstanding, of which 
certain phrases that some of them use make me appre- 
hensive. Mr. Wright, one of the many translators of 
Homer, has published a letter to the Dean of Canter- 25 
bury, complaining of some remarks of mine, uttered 



OXFORD AND PHILISTINISM. I33 

now a long while ago, on his version of the Iliad. 
One cannot be always studying one's own works, and 
I was really under the impression, till I saw Mr. 
Wright's complaint, that I had spoken of him with all 
5 respect. The reader may judge of my astonishment, 
therefore, at finding, from Mr. Wright's pamphlet, that 
I had *' declared with much sole mnity t hat there^Js, 



not any pfopeFreason f or his__ exislingJ^ ThatLneyeiL 

saidy ^17011 looking^back_aLJnyJ^ectuxes- oa txansj^ 
joiating^-flltnTier, I find that I did say, not that Mr. 
Wrigh t, but that Mr. ^ Wright's version of the Iliad^ 
repeatin £^n_JJie main iJig, merits and detects ._£>r 
Cowper's version, as Mr. Soth^by^s^;epeate<i_tho.se_of. 
Pope'sTersion,Tiad,^Tf 1 might be pardoned for saying 



15 so, no proper reason for existing. Elsewhere I ex- 

— pres^^poke of the'inerrforTTiis version; but I confess 

that the phrase, qualified as I have shown, about its 

want of a proper reason for existing, I used. Well,^ 

the phrase had, p^jiap'', too nuirh vivnrify ; we have 

20 all ot lis^^^^right to_gxis t, we and our wo rks ; an 

unpopulaFauthor should be the^ last person to calHji 

— -rgtrestiryr TTHilIiighil So I gladly with drawjhe offend- 



ing phrase, and I am _sorrX-fP'' having used it ; Mr. 
Wright, however, woiil d perhaps be more indu lgent to 



25 my viv acrtY^JiJie^CQiisidej^ed that we are none ofLu^ 

likely to be lively much longe r. My vivacity is but 

the last sparkle of flame before we are all in the dark, 
the last glimpse of colour before we all go into 
drab, — the drab of the earnest, prosaic, practical, 
30 austerely literal future. Yes, the world will soon be 
the Philistines' ! and then, with every voice, not of 
thunder, silenced, and the whole earth filled and 



134 OXFORD AND PHILISTINISM. 

ennobled every morning by the magnificent roaring 
of the young lions of the Daily Telegraphy we shall all 
yawn in one another's faces with the dismallest, the 
most unimpeachable gravity. 

But I return to my design in writing this Preface. 5 
Tliat design jwas^ after a-pologising t«^ jyjVJ^VnghMV^^ 

my vi _vacity_gfJ''V<^ ypar<; ago, tn be g him and o t hers 

to let me bear my own burdens, without saddling the 
^eat and Tajjioiis lJjirye^Fslty'r: i^^ 
honour to belong with any portion of thenx _^ What ic 
I mean to deprecate is such phrases as, " his pro- 
fessorial assault," "his assertions issued ex cathedra,'' 
" the sanction of his name as the representative of 
poetry," and so on. __Ei:oud_as^ am of ray connection 
with the University of Oxford,^ I can truly say^tTiat 15 



knowing how unpopular a task ojie is undertaking 
when one tries to pull out a few more stops in tliat 
powerful but at present somewhat narrow-toned 
organ, the modern Englishman. I lm Y£-alwaYS sought 
to stand by myself, and to compromise others as 20 
little as possible Besides this, my nativ^^mo^esty 
is such, that I have always been shy of assuming the 
honourable style of Professor, because this is a title 
I share with so many distinguished men — Professor 
Pepper, Professor Anderson, Professor Frickel, and 25 
others — who adorn it, I feel, much more than I do. 

However, it is not merely out of modesty that I 
prefer to stand alone, and to concentrate on myself, 
as a plain citizen of the republic of letters, and not 
as an ofifice-bearer in a hierarchy, the whole responsi- 30 

' When the above was written the author had still the Chair of 
Poetry at Oxford, which he has since vacated. 



OXFORD AND PHILISTINISM. 1 35 

bility for all I write ; it is much more out of genuine 
devotion to the University of Oxford, for which I 
feel, and always must feel, the fondest, the most 
reverential attachment. In an epoch of dissolution 
5 and transformation, such as that on which we ar e 
nowTentefed, h abits, ties, jind^associations are.jngvjt^, 
alSTy^Broken up ^ the action ^if^indjvidnak hprnmps 
more" distlnct7 the shortcomings, erro rs, heats, dis- 
putespwhich necessarily attend individu al actio n, are 

iobroiight_jnto_grpatpr prnminenre. IVho would not 

gladly keep clear, from all these passing clouds, an 

august institution which was there before they arose, 

and which will be there when they have blown over ? 

It is true, the Saturday Review maintains that our 

15 epoch of transformation is finished ; that we have 
found our philosophy ; that the British nation has 
searched all anchorages for the spirit, and has finally 
anchored itself, in the fulness of perfected knowledge, 
on Benthamism, This idea at first made a great im- 

20 pression on me; not only because it is so consoling in it- 
self, but also because it explained a phenomenon which 
in the summer of last year had, I confess, a good 
deal troubled me. At that time my avocations led 
me to travel almost daily on one of the Great Eastern 

25 lines, — the Woodford Branch. Every one knows 
that the murderer, Muller, perpetrated his detestable 
act on the North London Railway, close by. The 
English middle class, of which I am myself a feeble 
unit, travel on the Woodford Branch in large numbers. 

30 Well, the demoralisation of our class, — the class which 
(the newspapers are constantly saying it, so I may 
repeat it without vanity) has done all the great things 



1^6 OXFORD AND PHILISTINISM. 



which have ever been done in England,— the demoral- 
isation, I say, of our class, caused by the Bow tragedy, 
was something bewildering. Myself a transcenden- 
talist (as the Saturday Review knows), I escaped the 
infection ; and, day after day, I used to ply my 5 
agitated fellow-travellers with all the consolations 
which my transcendentalism would naturally suggest 
to me. I reminded them how Caesar refused to take 
precautions against assassination, because life was not 
worth having at the price of an ignoble solicitude for 10 
it. I reminded them what insignificant atoms we all 
are in the life of the world. " Suppose the worst to 
happen," I said, addressing a portly jeweller from 
Cheapside ; " suppose even yourself to be the victim ; 
// ny a pas d'homme n^cessaii'c. We should miss you 15 
for a day or two upon the Woodford Branch ; but 
the great mundane movement would still go on, the 
gravel walks of your villa would still be rolled, 
dividends would still be paid at the Bank, omnibuses 
would still run, there would still be the old crush at 20 
the corner of Fenchurch Street." All was of no 
avail. Nothing could moderate, in the bosom of the 
great English middle-class, their passionate, absorb- 
ing, almost blood-thirsty clinging to life. At the 
moment I thought this over-concern a little un- 25 
worthy ; but the Saiu7'day Revieiv suggests a touching 
explanation of it. What I took for the ignoble cling- 
ing to life of a comfortable worldling, was, perhaps, 
only the ardent longing of a faithful Benthamite, 
traversing an age still dimmed by the last mists of 30 
transcendentalism, to be spared long enough to see 
his religion in the full and final blaze of its triumph. 



k 



OXFORD AND PHILISTINISM. I37 

This respectable man, whom I imagined to be going 
up to London to serve his shop, or to buy shares, or 
to attend an Exeter Hall meeting, or to assist at the 
deliberations of the Marylebone Vestry, was even, 
5 perhaps, in real truth, on a pious pilgrimage, to obtain 
from Mr. Bentham's executors a secret bone of his 
great dissected master. 

And yet, after all, I cannot but think that the 
Saturday Review has here, for once, fallen a victim to 

loan idea, — a beautiful but deluding idea, — and that 
the British nation has not yet, so entirely as the 
reviewer seems to imagine, found the last word of its 
philosophy. No, we are all seekers still ! seekers 
often make mistakes, and I wish mine to redound to 

15 my own discredit only, and not to touch Oxford. 
Beautiful city ! so venerable, so lovely, so unravaged 
by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so 
serene ! 

" There are our young barbarians, all at play! " 

20 And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading 
her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from 
her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age, 
who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, 
keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of 

25 us, to the ideal, to perfection, — to beauty, in a word, 
which is only truth seen from another side ? — nearer, 
perhaps, than all the science of Tubingen. Adorable 
dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic ! who hast 
given thyself so prodigally, given thyself to sides and 

30 to heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines ! 
home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and un- 



138 OXFORD AND PHILISTINISM. 

popular names, and impossible loyalties ! what ex- 
ample could ever so inspire us to keep down the 
Philistine in ourselves, what teacher could ever so 
save us from that bondage to which we are all prone, 
that bondage which Goethe, in his incomparable lines 5 
on the death of Schiller, makes it his friend's highest 
praise (and nobly did Schiller deserve the praise) to 
have left miles out of sight behind him ; the bond- 
age of ''was tins alle bdndigt^ das gemeine ! " She will 
forgive me, even if I have unwittingly drawn upon 10 
her a shot or two aimed at her unworthy son ; for she 
is generous, and the cause in which I fight is, after all, 
hers. Apparitions of a day, what is our puny warfare 
against the Philistines, compared with the warfare 
which this queen of romance has been waging against 15 
them for centuries, and will wage after we are gone ? 
— Essays in Criticism^ First Series, ed. 1896, Preface. 



Ipbilt6tini6m» 

Philistinism ! — we have not the expression in 
English. Perhaps we have not the word because we 
have so much of the thing. At Soli, I imagine, they 
did not talk of solecisms ; and here, at the very head- 
5 quarters of Goliath, nobody talks of Philistinism. 
The French have adopted the term ipicier (grocer), 
to designate the sort of being whom the Germans 
designate by the term Philistine ; but the French 
term, — besides that it casts a slur upon a respectable 

10 class, composed of living and susceptible members, 
while the original Philistines are dead and buried 
long ago, — is really, I think, in itself much less apt 
and expressive than the German term. Efforts have 
been made to obtain in English some term equivalent 

15 to Philister ox epicier ; Mr. Carlyle has made several 
such efforts : '* respectability with its thousand gigs," 
he says ; — well, the occupant of every one of these 
gigs is, Mr. Carlyle means, a Philistine. However, the 
word respectable is far too valuable a word to be thus 

20 perverted from its proper meaning ; if the English are 
ever to have a word for the thing we are speaking of, — 
and so prodigious are the changes which the modern 
spirit is introducing, that even we English shall per- 
haps one day come to want such a word, — I think we 

25 had much better take the term Philistine itself. 

Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind 
A 139 



140 PHILISTINISM. 

of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, 
unenlightened opponent of the chosen people, of the 
children of the light. The party of change, the 
would-be remodellers of the old traditional European 
order, the invokers of reason against custom, the 5 
representatives of the modern spirit in every sphere 
where it is applicable, regarded themselves, with the 
robust self-confidence natural to reformers as a chosen 
people, as children of the light. They regarded their 
adversaries as humdrum people, slaves to routine, lo 
enemies to light ; stupid and oppressive, but at the 
same time very strong. This explains the love which 
Heine, that Paladin of the modern spirit, has for 
France ; it explains the preference which he gives to 
France over Germany : " the French," he says, *' are 15 
the chosen people of the new religion, its first gospels 
and dogmas have been drawn up in their language ; 
Paris is the new Jerusalem, and the Rhine is the 
Jordan which divides the consecrated land of free- 
dom from the land of the Philistines." He means 20 
that the French, as a people, have shown more accessi- 
bility to ideas than any other people ; that prescrip- 
tion and routine have had less hold upon them than 
upon any other people ; that they have shown most 
readiness to move and to alter at the bidding (real or 25 
supposed) of reason. This explains, too, the detesta- 
tion which Heine had for the English : " I might 
settle in England," he says, in his exile, " if it were 
not that I should find there two things, coal-smoke 
and Englishmen; I cannot abide either." What he 30 
haled in the English was the "achtbrittische Be- 
schranktheit,"as he calls it, — \\\^ gemime British nar- 



PHILISTINISM. 141 

rowness. In truth, the English, profoundly as they have 
modified the old Middle-Age order, great as is the 
liberty which they have secured for themselves, have 
in all their changes proceeded, to use a familiar 
5 expression, by the rule of thumb ; what was intolera- 
bly inconvenient to them they have suppressed, and as 
they have suppressed it, not because it was irrational, 
but because it was practically inconvenient, they have 
seldom in suppressing it appealed to reason, but 

10 always, if possible, to some precedent, or form, or 
letter, which served as a convenient instrument for 
their purpose, and which saved them from the neces- 
sity of recurring to general principles. They have 
thus become, in a certain sense, of all people the 

15 most inaccessible to ideas and the most impatient of 
them ; inaccessible to them, because of their want of 
familiarity with them ; and impatient of them because 
they have got on so well without them, that they 
despise those who, not having got on as well as 

20 themselves, still make a fuss for what they themselves 
have done so well without. But there has certainly 
followed from hence, in this country, somewhat of a 
general depression of pure intelligence : Philistia has 
come to be thought by us the true Land of Promise, 

25 and it is anything but that ; the born lover of ideas, 
the born hater of commonplaces, must feel in this 
country, that the sky over his head is of brass and 
iron. The enthusiast for the idea, for reason, values 
reason, the idea, in and for themselves ; he values 

30 them, irrespectively of the practical conveniences 
which their triumph may obtain for him ; and the 
man who regards the possession of these practical 



142 PIIILISTINISM. 

conveniences as something sufficient in itself, some- 
thing which compensates for the absence or surrender 
of the idea, of reason, is, in his eyes, a Phih'stine. 
This is wliy Heine so often and so mercilessly attacks 
the liberals ; much as he hates conservatism he hates 5 
Philistinism even more, and whoever attacks conser- 
vatism itself ignobly, not as a child of light, not in 
the name of the idea, is a Philistine. Our Cobbett is 
thus for him, much as he disliked our clergy and 
aristocracy whom Cobbett attacked, a Philistine with lo 
six fingers on every hand and on every foot six toes, 
four-and-twenty in number : a Philistine, the staff of 
whose spear is like a weaver's beam. Thus he speaks 
of him : — 

"While I translate Cobbett's words, the man him- 15 
self comes bodily before my mind's eye, as I saw him 
at that uproarious dinner at the Crown and Anchor 
Tavern, with his scolding red face and his radical 
laugh, in which venomous hate mingles with a mock- 
ing exultation at his enemies' surely approaching 20 
downfall. He is a chained cur, who falls with equal 
fury on every one whom he does not know, often 
bites the best friend of the house in his calves, barks 
incessantly, and just because of this incessantness of 
his barking cannot get listened to, even when he barks 25 
at a real thief. Therefore the distinguished thieves 
who plunder England do not think it necessary to 
throw the growling Cobbett a bone to stop his mouth. 
This makes the dog furiously savage, and he shows 
all his hungry teeth. Poor old Cobbett ! England's 30 
dog ! I have no love for thee, for every vulgar nature 
my soul abhors ; but thou touchest me to the inmost 



PHILISTINISM. 143 

soul with pity, as I see how thou strainest in vain to 
break loose and to get at those thieves, who make 
off with their booty before thy very eyes, and mock at 
thy fruitless springs and thine impotent howling." 
5 There is balm in Philistia as well as in Gilead. A 
chosen circle of children of the m.odern spirit, per- 
fectly emancipated from prejudice and commonplace, 
regarding the ideal side of things in all its efforts for 
change, passionately despising half-measures and con- 

lodescension to human folly and obstinacy, — with a 
bewildered, timid, torpid multitude behind, — conducts 
a country to the government of Herr von Bismarck. 
A nation regarding the practical side of things in its 
efforts for change, attacking not what is irrational, 

15 but what is pressingly inconvenient, and attacking 
this as one body, " moving altogether if it move at 
all," and treating children of light like the very 
harshest of stepmothers, comes to the prosperity and 
liberty of modern England. For all that, however, 

20 Philistia (let me say it again) is not the true promised 
land, as we English commonly imagine it to be ; and 
our excessive neglect of the idea, and consequent 
inaptitude for it, threatens us, at a moment when the 
idea is beginning to exercise a real power in human 

25 society, with serious future inconvenience, and, in the 
meanwhile, cuts us off from the sympathy of other 
nations, which feel its power more than we do. — 
Essays^ I., ed. 1896, pp. 162-167. 



Culture anD Bnarcbij, 

In one of his speeches a short time ago, that fine 
speaker and famous Liberal, Mr. Bright, took occasion 
to have a fling at the friends and preachers of culture. 
" People who talk about what they call culture ! " 
said he, contemptously ; " by which they mean a 5 
smattering of the two dead languages of Greek and 
Latin." And he went on to remark, in a strain with 
which modern speakers and writers have made us 
very familiar, how poor a thing this culture is, how 
little good it can do to the world, and how absurd it lo 
is for its possessors to set much store by it. And the 
other day a younger Liberal than Mr. Bright, one of 
a school whose mission it is to bring into order and 
system that body of truth with which the earlier 
Liberals merely fumbled, a member of the University 15 
of Oxford, and a very clever writer, Mr. Frederic 
Harrison, developed, in the systematic and stringent 
manner of his school, the thesis which Mr. Bright 
liad propounded in only general terms. ** Perhaps 
the very silliest cant of the day," said Mr. Frederic 20 
Harrison, " is the cant about culture. Culture is a 
desirable quality in a critic of new books, and sits 
well on a possessor of belles-lettres ; but as applied to 
politics, it means simply a turn for small fault-finding, 
love of selfisli ease, and indecision in action. The 25 
man of culture is iiv^litics one of the poorest mortals 



CULTURE AND ANARCHY. MS 

alive. For simple pedantry and want of good sense 
no man is his equal. No assumption is too unreal, 
no end is too unpractical for him. But the active 
exercise of politics requires common sense, sympathy, 

5 trust, resolution, and enthusiasm, qualities which 
your man of culture has carefully rooted up, lest they 
damage the delicacy of his critical olfactories. Per- 
haps they are the only class of responsible beings in 
the community who cannot with safety be entrusted 

lo with power." 

Now for my part I do not wish to see men of 
culture asking to be entrusted with power ; and, 
indeed, I have freely said, that in my opinion the 
speech most proper, at present, for a man of culture 

15 to make to a body of his fellow-countrymen who get 
him into a committee-room, is Socrates's : Knoiu thy- 
self ! and this is not a speech to be made by men 
wanting to be entrusted with power. For this very 
indifference to direct political action I have been 

20 taken to task by the Daily Telegraphy coupled, by a 
strange perversity of fate, with just that very one of 
the Hebrew prophets whose style I admire the least, 
and called *'an elegant Jeremiah." It is because I 
say (to use the words which the Daily Telegraph puts 

25 in my mouth) : — *' You mustn't make a fuss because 
you have no vote, — that is vulgarity ; you mustn't 
hold big meetings to agitate for reform bills and to 
repeal corn laws, — that is the very height of vul- 
garity," — it is for this reason that I am called some- 

30 times an elegant Jeremiah, sometimes a spurious 
Jeremiah, a Jeremiah about the reality of whose 
mission the writer in the Daily Telegraph has his 



146 CULTURE AND ANARCHY. 

doubts. It is evident, therefore, that I have so taken 
my line as not to be exposed to the whole brunt of 
Mr. Frederic Harrison's censure. Still, I have often 
spoken in praise of culture, I have striven to make 
all my works and ways serve the interests of culture. 5 
I take culture to be something a great deal more than 
what Mr. Frederic Harrison and others call it : *' a 
desirable quality in a critic of new books." Nay, 
even though to a certain extent I am disposed to 
agree with Mr. Frederic Harrison, that men of culture 10 
are just the class of responsible beings in this com- 
munity of ours who cannot properly, at present, be 
entrusted with power, I am not sure that I do not 
think this the fault of our community rather than of 
the men of culture. In short, although, like Mr. 15 
Bright and Mr. Frederic Harrison, and the editor of 
the Daily Telegraphy and a large body of valued friends 
of mine, I am a Liberal, yet I am a Liberal tempered 
by experience, reflection, and renouncement, and I 
am, above all, a believer in culture. Therefore 1 20 
propose now to try and inquire, in the simple un- 
systematic way which best suits both my taste and 
my powers, what culture really is, what good it can 
do, what is our own special need of it ; and I shall 
seek to find some plain grounds on which a faith in 25 
culture, — both my own faith in it and the faith of 
others, — may rest securely. — Culture and Anarchy, ed. 
1896, Introduction. 



The disparagers of culture make its motive curi- 
osity ; sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere 
exclusiveness and vanity. The culture which is sup- 
posed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and 
5 Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing so 
intellectual as curiosity ; it is valued either out of 
sheer vanity and ignorance or else as an engine of 
social and class distinction, separating its holder, like 
a badge or title, from other people who have not got 

10 it. No serious man would call this culture^ or attach 
any value to it, as culture, at all. To find the real 
ground for the very different estimate which serious 
people will set upon culture, we must find some 
motive for culture in the terms of which may lie a 

15 real ambiguity ; and such a motive the word curiosity 
gives us. 

I have before now pointed out that we English do 
not, like the foreigners, use this word in a good sense 
as well as in a bad sense. With us the word is always 

20 used in a somewhat disapproving sense. A liberal 
and intelligent eagerness about the things of the mind 
may be meant by a foreigner when he speaks of 
curiosity, but with us the word always conveys a cer- 
tain notion of frivolous and unedifying activity. In 

25 the Quarterly Review, some little time ago, was an 
estimate of the celebrated French critic, M. Sainte- 



148 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

Beuve, and a very inadequate estimate it in my judg- 
ment was. And its inadequacy consisted chiefly in 
this : that in our English way it left out of sight the 
double sense really involved in the word curiosity, 
thinking enough was said to stamp M. Sainte-Beuve 5 
with blame if it was said that he was impelled in his 
operations as a critic by curiosity, and omitting either 
to perceive that M. Sainte-Beuve himself, and many 
other people with him, would consider that this was 
praiseworthy and not blameworthy, or to point out lo 
why it ought really to be accounted worthy of blame 
and not of praise. For as there is a curiosity about 
intellectual matters which is futile, and merely a 
disease, so there is certainly a curiosity, — a desire 
after the things of the mind simply for their own 15 
sakes and for the pleasure of seeing them as they 
are, — which is, in an intelligent being, natural and 
laudable. Nay, and the very desire to see things as 
they are implies a balance and regulation of mind 
which is not often attained without fruitful effort, and 20 
which is the very opposite of the blind and diseased 
impulse of mind which is what we mean to blame 
when we blame curiosity. Montesquieu says : '' The 
first motive which ought to impel us to study is the 
desire to augment the excellence of our nature, and to 25 
render an intelligent being yet more intelligent." 
This is the true ground to assign for the genuine 
scientific passion, however manifested, and for culture, 
viewed simply as a fruit of this passion ; and it is a 
worthy ground, even though we let the term curiosity ^o 
stand to describe it. 

But there is of culture another view, in which not 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 149 

solely the scientific passion, the sheer desire to see 
things asthey are, natural and proper in an intelligent 
being, appears as the ground of it. There is a view- 
in which all the love of our neighbour, the impulses 
5 towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire for 
removing human error, clearing human confusion, and 
diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to 
leave the world better and happier than we found it, — 
motives eminently such as are called social, — come in 

10 as part of the grounds of culture, and the main and 
pre-eminent part. Culture is then properly described 
not as having its or igin in curiosity, but as having its 
origin in the love of perfection ; it is ^ study of per- 
fection. It moves by the force, not merely or primarily 

15 of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also 
of the moral and social passion for doing good. As, 
in the first view of it, we took for its worthy motto 
Montesquieu's words : " To render an intelligent 
being yet more intelligent ! " so, in the second view 

20 of it, there is no better motto which it can have than 
these words of Bishop Wilson : " To make reason and 
the will of God prevail ! " 

Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt to 
be overhasty in determining what reason and the will 

25 of God say, because its turn is for acting rather than 
thinking and it wants to be beginning to act ; and 
whereas it is apt to take its own conceptions, v»^hich 
proceed from its own state of development and share 
in all the imperfections and immaturities of this, for a 

30 basis of action ; what distinguishes culture is, that it 
is possessed by the scientific passion as well as by 
the passion of doing good ; that it demands worthy 



150 SWEETXESS AND LIGHT. 

notions of reason and the will of God, and does not 
readily suffer its own crude conceptions to substitute 
themselves for them. And knowing that no action or 
institution can be salutary and stable which is not 
based on reason and the will of God, it is not so bent 5 
on acting and instituting, eveai with the great aim of 
diminishing human error and misery ever before its 
thoughts, but that it can remember that acting and 
instituting are of little use, unless we know how and 
what we ought to act and to institute. 10 

This culture is more interesting and more far-reach- 
ing than that other, which is founded solely on the 
scientific passion for knowing. But it needs times of 
faith and ardour, times when the intellectual horizon 
is opening and widening all round us, to flourish in. 15 
And is not the close and bounded intellectual horizon 
within which we have long lived and moved now lift- 
ing up. and are not new lights finding free passage to 
shine in upon us ? For a long time there was no 
passage for them to make their way in upon us, and 20 
then it was of no use to think of adapting the world's 
action to them. Where was the hope of making 
reason and the will of God prevail among people who 
had a routine which they had christened reason and 
the will of God, in which they were inextricably 25 
bound, and beyond which they had no power of 
looking ? But now the iron force of adhesion to the 
old routine, — social, political, religious, — has wonder- 
fully yielded ; the iron force of exclusion of all which 
is new has wonderfully yielded. The danger now is, 30 
not that people should obstinately refuse to allow 
anything but their old routine to pass for reason and 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 15 1 

the will of God, but either that they should allow some 
novelty or other to pass for these too easily, or else 
that they should underrate the importance of them 
altogether, and think it enough to follow action for its 
5 own sake, without troubling themselves to make reason 
and the will of God prevail therein. Now, then, is 
the moment for culture to be of service, culture which 
believes in making reason and the will of God prevail, 
believes in perfection, is the study and pursuit of per- 

lofection, and is no longer debarred, by a rigid invinci- 
ble exclusion of whatever is new, from getting 
acceptance for its ideas, simply because they are 
new. 

The moment this view of culture is seized, the 

15 moment it is regarded not solely as the endeavour to 
see things as they are, to draw towards a knowledge 
of the universal order which seems to be intended and 
aimed at in the world, and which it is a man's happi- 
ness to go along with or his misery to go counter 

20 to, — to learn, in short, the will of God, — the moment, 
I say, culture is considered not merely as the endeavour 
to see and learn this, but as the endeavour, also, to 
make \\. prevail^ the moral, social, and beneficent char- 
acter of culture becomes manifest. The mere 

25 endeavour to see and learn the truth for our own 
personal satisfaction is indeed a commencement for 
making it prevail, a preparing the way for this, which 
always serves this, and is wrongly, therefore, stamped 
with blame absolutely in itself and not only in its 

30 caricature and degeneration. But perhaps it has got 
stamped with blame, and disparaged with the dubious 
title of curiosity, because in comparison with this 



152 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

wider endeavour of such great and plain utility it 
looks selfish, petty, and unprofitable. 

And relip;ion, the greatest and n in<;t importarLt of 
the e fforts by \ \jn^ch_jhe_hum. an race has m anife^d 
its impulse to perfect itself, — religion, that voice of 5 
the deepest human experience, — does not only enjoin 
an d sanction the aim whichjs the great^aim-of^cnlr-^ 
ture, the aim of setting ourselves to ascertain what 
perfection is and to make it prevail ; but also, in 
determining generally in what human perfection con- lo 
sists, religion comes to a conclusion identical with 
that which culture, — culture seeking the determination 
of this question through all the voices of human ex- 
perience which have been heard upon it, of art, 
science, poetry, philosophy, history, as well as of 15 
religion, in order to give a greater fulness and cer- 
tainty to its solution, — likewise reaches. Religion 
says : The kiiizdoin of God is ivitJiiiijmi^^^^2J£i^ cult.U-Le^ 
in like manner, places human perfection in 2,\i inter 7iaL 
condition; in the "growtF'and^predominance of our 20 
humanity proper, as distinguished from our animality. 
It places it in the ever-increasing efficacy and in the 
general harmonious expansion of those gifts of thought 
and feeling, which make the peculiar dignity, wealth, 
and happiness of human nature. As I have said on a 25 
former occasion : *' It is in making endless additions 
to itself, in the endless expansion of its powers, in 
e ndless growth in wisdom and beaut y, that the spirit 
of the human race finds its ideal. To reach this i'd^al, 
culture is an indispensable aid^ajnd_lhat_is^he_lrue 30 
value of cukuf^T^^ — Not a having and a resting, but a 
growing and a becoming, is the character of perfection 



t 



SlVEETiVESS AND LIGHT. 153 

as culture conceives it ; and here, too, it coincides 
with religion. 

And because men are all members of one great 
whole, and the sympathy which is in human nature 
5 will not allow one member to be indifferent to the 
rest or to have a perfect welfare independent of the 
rest, the expansion of our humanity, to suit the idea 
of perfection which culture forms, must be a gefieral 
expansion. Perfection, as culture conceives it, is not 

lo possible while the individual remains isolated. The 
individual is required, under pain of being stunted 
and enfeebled in his own development if he disobeys, 
to carry others along with him in his march towards 
perfection, to be continually doing all he can to 

15 enlarge and increase the volume of the human stream 
sweeping thitherward. And here, once more, culture 
lays on us the same obligation as religion, which says, 
as Bishop Wilson has admirably put it, that " to pro- 
mote the kingdom of God is to increase and hasten 

20 one's own happiness." 

But, finally, perfection, — as culture from a thorough 
disinterested study of human nature and human expe- 
rience learns to conceive it, — is a harmonious expan- 
sion of ail the powers which make tlie beauty and 

25 worth of human nature, and is not consistent with the 
over- development of any one power at the expense of 
the rest. Here culture goes beyond religion, as 
religion is generally conceived by us. 

If culture, then, is astudy of perfection^ and of 

30 harmonious perfection, general perfection, and per- 
fection which consists in becoming something rather 
than in having something, in an inward condition of 



154 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circum- 
stances, — it is clear that culture, instead of being the 
frivolous and useless thing which Mr. Bright, and Mr, 
Frederic Harrison, and many other Liberals are apt 
to call it, has a very important function to fulfil for 5 
mankind. And this function is particularly important 
in our modern world, of which the whole civilisation 
is, to a much greater degree than the civilisation of 
Greece and Rome, mechanical and external, and tends 
constantly to become more so. But above all in our lo 
own country has culture a weighty part to perform, 
because here that mechanical character, which civil- 
isation tends to take everywhere, is shown in the most 
eminent degree. Indeed nearly all the characters of 
perfection, as culture teaches us to fix them, meet in 15 
this country with some powerful tendency which 
thwarts them and sets them at defiance. The idea of 
perfection as an imvard condition of the mind and 
spirit is at variance with the mechanical and material 
civilisation in esteem with us, and nowhere, as I have 20 
said, so much in esteem as with us. The idea of per- 
fection as a ge7ieral expansion of the human family is 
at variance with our strong individualism, our hatred 
of all limits to the unrestrained swing of the indi- 
vidual's personality, our maxim of " every man for 25 
himself." Above all, the idea of perfection as a har- 
vionioiis expansion of human nature is at variance 
with our want of flexibility, with our inaptitude for 
seeing more than one side of a thing, with our intense 
energetic absorption in the particular pursuit we 30 
happen to be following. So culture has a rough task 
to achieve in this country. Its preachers have, and 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 155 

are likely long to have, a hard time of it, and they will 
much oftener be regarded, for a great while to come, 
as elegant or spurious Jeremiahs than as friends and 
benefactors. That, however, will not prevent their 
5 doing in the end good service if they persevere. And, 
meanwhile, the mode of action they have to pursue, 
and the sort of habits they must fight against, ought 
to be made quite clear for every one to see, who 
may be willing to look at the matter attentively and 
10 dispassionately. 

Eajjhjnjnachinery is, Ijaid, our besetting danger ; 



I 



often in machinery most absurdly disproportioned to 
the end which this machinery, if it is to do any good 
at all, is to serve ; but always in machinery, as if it 

15 had a value in and for itself. What is freedom but 
machinery ? what is population but machinery ? what 
is coal but machinery ? what are railroads but 
machinery ? what is wealth but machinery ? what 
are, even, religious organisations but machinery ? 

20 Now almost every voice in England is accustomed to 
speak of these things as if they were precious ends in 
themselves, and therefore had some of the characters 
of perfection indisputably joined to them, I have 
before now noticed Mr. Roebuck's stock argument for 

25 proving the greatness and happiness of England as 
she is, and for quite stopping the mouths of all gain- 
sayers. Mr. Roebuck is never weary of reiterating 
this argument of his, so I do not know why I should 
be weary of noticing it. " May not every man in 

30 England say what he likes ? " — Mr. Roebuck perpetu- 
ally asks ; and that, he thinks, is quite sufficient, and 
when every man may say what he likes, our aspira- 



156 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

tions ought to be satisfied. But the aspirations of 
culture, which is the study of perfection, are not satis- 
fied, unless what men say, when they may say what 
they like, is worth saying, — has good in it, and more 
good than bad. In the same way the Times, replying 5 
to some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, and 
behaviour of the English abroad, urges that the 
English ideal is that every one should be free to do 
and to look just as he likes. But culture indefatiga- 
bly tries, not to make what each raw person may like 10 
the rule by which he fashions himself ; but to draw 
ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, 
graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to 
like that. 

And in the same way with respect to railroads and 15 
coal. Every one must have observed the strange 
language current during the late discussions as to the 
possible failures of our supplies of coal. Our coal, 
thousands of people were saying, is the real basis of 
our national greatness ; if our coal runs short, there is 20 
an end of the greatness of England. But what is 
greatness ? — culture makes us ask. Greatness is a 
spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and 
admiration ; and the outward proof of possessing 
greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admira-25 
tion. If England were swallowed up by the sea to- 
morrow, which of the two, a hundred years hence, 
would most excite the love, interest, and admiration 
of mankind, — would most, therefore, show the evi- 
dences of having possessed greatness, — the England 30 
of the last twenty years, or the England of Elizabeth, 
of a time of splendid spiritual eft'ort, but when our 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 157 

coal, and our industrial operations depending on coal, 
were very little developed ? Well, then, what an 
unsound habit of mind it must be which makes us 
talk of things like coal or iron as constituting the 
5 greatness of England, and how salutary a friend is 
culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and thus 
dissipating delusions of this kind and fixing standards 
of perfection that are real ! 

Wealth, again , that end to which our prodigious 

10 works for material advanlage are directed,— the com- 
monest of commonplaces tells us how men are always 
apt to regard wealth as a precious end in itself ; and 
certainly they have never been so apt thus to regard 
it as they are in England at the present time. Never 

15 did people believe anything more firmly than nine 
Englishmen out of ten at the present day believe that 
our greatness and welfare are proved by our being so 
very rich. Now, the use of culture is that it helps 
us, by means of its spiritual standard of perfection, to 

20 regard wealth as but machinery, and not only to say, 
as a matter of words that we regard wealth as but 
machinery, but really to perceive and feel that it is 
so. If it were not for this purging effect wrought 
upon our minds by culture, the whole world, the 

25 future as well as the present, would inevitably belong 
to the Philistines. The people who believe most that 
our greatness and welfare are proved by our being 
very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts 
to becoming rich, are just the very people whom 

30 we call Philistines. Culture says : '* Consider these 
people, then, their way of life, their habits, their 
manners, the very tones of their voice ; look at them 



158 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

attentively ; observe the literature they read, the 
things which give them pleasure, the words which 
come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which 
make the furniture of their minds ; would any amount 
of wealth be worth having with the condition that 5 
one was to become just like these people by having 
it ? " And thus culture begets a dissatisfaction which 
is of the highest possible value in stemming the 
common tide of men's thoughts in a wealthy and 
industrial community, and which saves the future, 10 
as one may hope, from being vulgarised, even if it 
cannot save the present. 

Population, again, and bodily health and vigour, 
are things which are nowhere treated in such an un- 
intelligent, misleading, exaggerated way as in England. 15 
Both are really machinery ; yet how many people all 
around us do we see rest in them and fail to look 
beyond them ! Why, one has heard people, fresh 
from reading certain articles of the Times on the 
Registrar-General's returns of marriages and births in 20 
this country, who would talk of our large English 
families in quite a solemn strain, as if they had some- 
thing in itself beautiful, elevating, and meritorious in 
them ; as if the British Philistine would have only 
to present himself before the Great Judge with his 25 
twelve children, in order to be received among the 
sheep as a matter of right ! 

But bodily health and vigour, it may be said, are 
not to be classed with wealth and population as mere 
machinery ; they have a more real and essential value. 30 
True ; but only as they are more intimately connected 
with a perfect spiritual condition than wealth or popu- 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 159 

lation are. The moment we disjoin them from the 
idea of a perfect spiritual condition, and pursue them, 
as we do pursue them, for their own sake and as ends 
in themselves, our worship of them becomes as mere 
5 worship of machinery, as our worship of wealth or 
population, and as unintelligent and vulgarising a 
worship as that is. Every one with anything like an 
adequate idea of human perfection has distinctly 
marked this subordination to higher and spiritual 

10 ends of the cultivation of bodily vigour and activity. 
*' Bodily exercise profiteth little ; but godliness is 
profitable unto all things," says the author of the 
Epistle to Timothy. And the utilitarian Franklin 
says just as explicitly : — " Eat and drink such an 

15 exact quantity as suits the constitution of thy body, 
in reference to the services of the miftd.^' But the point 
of view of culture, keeping the mark of human per- 
fection simply and broadly in view, and not assigning 
to this perfection, as religion or utilitarianism assigns 

20 to it, a special and limited character, this point of 
view, I say, of culture is best given by these words 
of Epictetus: — " It is a sign of d<^uta," says he, — that 
is, of a nature not finely tempered, — " to give your- 
selves up to things which relate to the body ; to make, 

25 for instance, a great fuss about exercise, a great fuss 
about eating, a great fuss about drinking, a great fuss 
about walking, a great fuss about riding. All these 
things ought to be done merely by the way : the for- 
mation of the spirit and character must be our real 

30 concern." This is admirable ; and, indeed, the Greek 
word ev(f)VLa, a finely tempered nature, gives exactly 
the notion of perfection as culture brings us to con- 



l6o SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

ceive it : a harmonious perfection, a perfection in 
which the characters of beauty and intelligence are 
both present, which unites " the two noblest of things," 
— as Swift, who of one of the two, at any rate, had 
himself all too little, most happily calls them in his 5 
Battle of the Books,— ^^^^^Qjtwo noblest of things,^iZ£::^/i_ 
nesscuidUghty The £^^175 is the man who tends 
towards sweetness and light ; the dt^v^Js on the other 
hand, is our Philistine. The immense spiritual sig- 
nificance of the Greeks is due to their having been 10 
inspired with this central and happy idea of the 
essential character of human perfection ; and Mr. 
Bright's misconception of culture, as a smattering of 
Greek and Latin, comes itself, after all, from this 
wonderful significance of the Greeks having affected 15 
the very machinery of our education, and is in itself 
a kind of homage to it. 

In thus making sweetness and light to be charac- 
ters of perfection, culture is of like spirit with poetry, 
follows one law jvith poetry. Far more than on our 20 
freedom, our population, and our industrialism, many 
amongst us rely upon our religious organisations to 
save us. I have called religion a yet more important 
manifestation of human nature than poetry, because 
it has worked on a broader scale for perfection, and 25 
with greater masses of men. But the idea of beauty 
and of a human nature perfect on all its sides, which 
is the dominant idea of poetry, is a true and invalu- 
able idea, though it has not yet had the success that 
the idea of conquering the obvious faults of our 30 
animality, and of a human nature perfect on the 
moral side, — which is the dominant idea of religion, — 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. lOi 

has been enabled to have ; and it is destined, adding 
to itself the religious idea of a devout energy, to trans- 
form and govern the other. 

The best art and poetry of the Greeks, in which 
5 religion and poetry are one, in which the idea of 
beauty and of a human nature perfect on all sides adds 
to itself a religious and devout energy, and works in 
the strength of that, is on this account of such sur- 
passing interest and instructiveness for us, though it 

10 was, — as, having regard to the human race in general, 
and, indeed, having regard to the Greeks themselves, 
we must own, — a premature attempt, an attempt 
which for success needed the moral and religious fibre 
in humanity to be more braced and developed than it 

15 had yet been. But Greece did not err in having the 
idea of beauty, harmony, and complete human per- 
fection, so present and paramount. It is impossible 
to have this idea too present and paramount ; only, 
the moral fibre must be braced too. And we, because 

20 we have braced the moral fibre, are not on that 
account in the right way, if at the same time the idea 
of beauty, harmony, and complete human perfection, 
is wanting or misapprehended amongst us ; and evi- 
dently it is wanting or misapprehended at present. 

25 And when we rely as we do on our religious organisa- 
tions, which in themselves do not and cannot give us 
this idea, and think we have done enough if we make 
them spread and prevail, then I say, we fall into our 
common fault of overvaluing machinery. 

30 Nothing is more common than for people to con- 
found the inward peace and satisfaction which follows 
the subduing of the obvious faults of our animality 



l62 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

with what I may call absolute inward peace and satis- 
faction, — the peace and satisfaction which are reached 
as we draw near to complete spiritual perfection, and 
not merely to moral perfection, or rather to relative 
moral perfection. No people in the world have done 5 
more and struggled more to attain this relative moral 
perfection than our English race has. For no people 
in the world has the command to resist the devil, to 
overcome the wicked one, in the nearest and most obvi- 
ous sense of those words, had such a pressing force lo 
and reality. And we have had our reward, not only 
in the great worldly prosperity which our obedience to 
this command has brought us, but also, and far more, 
in great inward peace and satisfaction. But to me 
few things are more pathetic than to see people, on 15 
the strength of the inward peace and satisfaction 
which their rudimentary efforts towards perfection 
have brought them, employ, concerning their incom- 
plete perfection and the religious organisations within 
which they have found it, language which properly 20 
applies only to complete perfection, and is a far-off 
echo of the human soul's prophecy of it. Religion 
itself, I need hardly say, supplies them in abund- 
ance with this grand language. And very freely do 
they use it ; yet it is really the severest possible 25 
criticism of such an incomplete perfection as alone 
we have yet reached through our religious organi- 
sations. 

The impulse of the English race towards moral 
development and self-conquest has nowhere so power- 30 
fully manifested itself as in Puritanism. Nowhere 
has Puritanism found so adequate an expression as in 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 163 

the religious organisation of the Independents. The 
modern Independents have a newspaper, the Noncon- 
formist^ written with great sincerity and ability. The 
motto, the standard, the profession of faith which this 
5 organ of theirs carries aloft, is : " The Dissidence of 
Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant reli- 
gion," There is sweetness and light, and an ideal of 
complete harmonious human perfection ! One need 
not go to culture and poetry to find language to judge 

10 it. Religion, with its instinct for perfection, supplies 
language to judge it, language, too, which is in our 
mouths every day. " Finally, be of one mind, united 
in feeling," says St. Peter. There is an ideal which 
judges the Puritan ideal : ''The Dissidence of Dissent 

15 and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion ! " 
And religious organisations like this are what people 
believe in, rest in, would give their lives for ! Such, I 
say, is the wonderful virtue of even the beginnings of 
perfection, of having conquered even the plain faults 

20 of our animality, that the religious organisation which 
has helped us to do it can seem to us something 
precious, salutary, and to be propagated, even when 
it wears such a brand of imperfection on its forehead 
as this. And men have got such a habit of giving to 

25 the language of religion a special application, of 
making it a mere jargon, that for the condemnation 
which religion itself passes on the shortcomings of 
their religious organisations they have no ear ; they 
are sure to cheat themselves and to explain this con- 

3odemnation away. They can only be reached by the 
criticism which culture, like poetry, speaking a lan- 
guage not to be sophisticated, and resolutely testing 



1 64 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

these organisations by the ideal of a human perfection 
complete on all sides, applies to them. 

But men of culture and poetry, it will be said, are 
again and again failing, and failing conspicuously, in 
the necessary first stage to a harmonious perfection, 5 
in the subduing of the great obvious faults of our 
animality, which it is the glory of these religious 
organisations to have helped us to subdue. True, 
they do often so fail. They have often been without 
the virtues as well as the faults of the Puritan ; it has 10 
been one of their dangers that they so felt the Puri- 
tan's faults that they too much neglected the practice 
of his virtues. I will not, however, exculpate them at 
the Puritan's expense. They have often failed in 
morality, and morality is indispensable. And they 15 
have been punished for their failure, as the Puritan 
has been rewarded for his performance. They have 
been punished wherein they erred ; but their ideal of 
beauty, of sweetness and light, and a human nature 
complete on all its sides, remains the true ideal of per- 20 
fection still ; just as the Puritan's ideal of perfection 
remains narrow and inadequate, although for what he 
did well he has been richly rewarded. Notwithstand- 
ing the mighty results of the Pilgrirn Fathers' voyage, 
they and their standard of perfection are rightly 25 
judged when we figure to ourselves Shakspeare or 
Virgil, — souls in whom sweetness and light, and 
all that in human nature is most humane, were 
eminent, — accompanying them on their voyage, and 
think what intolerable company Shakspeare and Vir- 30 
gil would have found them ! In the same way let us 
iudge the religious organisations which we see all 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 165 

around us. Do not let us deny the good and the 
happiness which they have accomplished ; but do not 
let us fail to see clearly that their idea of human per- 
fection is narrow and inadequate, and that the Dissi- 
5 dence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protes- 
tant religion will never bring humanity to its true 
goal. As I said with regard to wealth : Let us look 
at the life of those who live in and for it, — so I say 
with regard to the religious organisations. Look at 

10 the life imaged in such a newspaper as the Noncon- 
formist^ — a life of jealousy of the Establishment, dis- 
putes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels, sermons ; 
and then think of it as an ideal of a human life com- 
pleting itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its 

15 organs after sweetness, light, and perfection ! 

Another newspaper, representing, like the Nojtcon- 
formist^ one of the religious organisations of this 
country, was a short time ago giving an account of 
the crowd at Epsom on the Derby day, and of all the 

20 vice and hideousness which was to be seen in that 
crowd ; and then the writer turned suddenly round 
upon Professor Huxley, and asked him how he pro- 
posed to cure all this vice and hideousness without 
religion. I confess I felt disposed to ask the asker 

25 this question : and how do you propose to cure it 
with such a religion as yours ? How is the ideal of a 
life so unlovely, so unattractive, so incomplete, so nar- 
row, so far removed from a true and satisfying ideal 
of human perfection, as is the life of your religious 

30 organisation as you yourself reflect it, to conquer and 
transform all this vice and hideousness ? Indeed, the 
strongest plea for the study of perfection as pursued 



1 66 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

by culture, the clearest proof of the actual inadequacy 
of the idea of perfection held by the religious organis- 
ations, — expressing, as I have said, the most wide- 
spread effort which the human race has yet made 
after perfection, — is to be found in the state of our 5 
life and society with these in possession of it, and 
having been in possession of it I know not how many 
hundred years. We are all of us included in some 
religious organisation or other ; we all call ourselves, 
in the sublime and aspiring language of religion which lo 
I have before noticed, children of God. Children of 
God ; — it is an immense pretension ! — and how are 
we to justify it ? By the works which we do, and the 
words which we speak. And the work which we 
collective children of God do, our grand centre of 15 
life, our city which we have builded for us to dwell in, 
is London ! London, with its unutterable external 
hideousness, and with its internal canker of publich 
egesfas, privatim opidentia, — to use the words which 
Sallust puts into Cato's mouth about Rome, — un- 20 
equalled in the world ! The word, again, which we 
children of God speak, the voice which most hits our 
collective thought, the newspaper with the largest 
circulation in England, nay, with the largest circula- 
tion in the whole world, is the Daily Telegraph ! I 25 
say that when our religious organisations, — which I 
admit to express the most considerable effort after 
perfection that our race has yet made, — land us in no 
better result than this, it is high time to examine 
carefully their idea of perfection, to see whether it 30 
does not leave out of account sides and forces of 
human nature which we might turn to great use ; 



SPVEETxVESS AND LIGHT. 167 

whether It would not be more operative if it were 
more complete. And I say that the English reliance 
on our religious organisations and on their ideas of 
human perfection just as they stand, is like our reli- 
5 ance on freedom, on muscular Christianity, on popula- 
tion, on coal, on wealth, — mere belief in machinery, 
and unfruitful ; and that it is wholesomely counter- 
acted by culture, bent on seeing things as they are, 
and on drawing the human race onwards to a more 

10 complete, a harmonious perfection. 

Culture, however, shows its single-minded love of 
perfection, its desire simply to make reason and the 
will of God prevail, its freedom from fanaticism, by its 
attitude towards all this machinery, even while it insists 

15 that it is machinery. Fanatics, seeing the mischief 
men do themselves by their blind belief in some 
machinery or other, — whether it is wealth and indus- 
trialism, or whether it is the cultivation of bodily 
strength and activity, or whether it is a political organ- 

2oisation, — or whether it is a religious organisation, — 
oppose with might and main the tendency to this or 
that political and religious organisation, or to games 
and athletic exercises, or to wealth and industrialism, 
and try violently to stop it. But the flexibility which 

25 sweetness and light give, and which is one of the 
rewards of culture pursued in good faith, enables a 
man to see that a tendency may be necessary, and 
even, as a preparation for something in the future, 
salutary, and yet that the generations or individuals 

30 who obey this tendency are sacrificed to it, that they 
fall short of the hope of perfection by following it ; 
and that its mischiefs are to be criticised, lest it should 



l68 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

take too firm a hold and last after it has served its 
purpose. 

Mr. Gladstone well pointed out, in a speech at 
Paris, — and others have pointed out the same thing, — 
how necessary is the present great movement towards 5 
wealth and industrialism, in order to lay broad founda- 
tions of material well-being for the society of the 
future. The worst of these justifications is, that they 
are generally addressed to the very people engaged, 
body and soul, in the movement in question ; at all 10 
events, that they are always seized with the greatest 
avidity by these people, and taken by them as quite 
justifying their life ; and that thus they tend to harden 
them in their sins. Now, culture admits the necessity 
of the movement towards fortune-making and exagger- 15 
ated industrialism, readily allows that the future may 
derive benefit from it ; but insists, at the same time, 
that the passing generations of industrialists, — form- 
ing, for the most part, the stout main body of Philis- 
tinism, — are sacrificed to it. In the same way, the 20 
result of all the games and sports which occupy the 
passing generation of boys and young men may be 
the establishment of abetter and sounder physical type 
for the future to work with. Culture does not set 
itself against the games and sports ; it congratulates 25 
the future, and hopes it will make a good use of its 
improved physical basis ; but it points out that our 
passing generation of boys and young men is, mean- 
time, sacrificed. Puritanism was perhaps necessary to 
develop the moral fibre of the English race, Noncon- 30 
formity to break the yoke of ecclesiastical domination 
over men's minds and to prepare the way for freedom 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 169 

of thought in the distant future ; still, culture points 
out that the harmonious perfection of generations of 
Puritans and Nonconformists have been, in conse- 
quence, sacrificed. Freedom of speech may be 
5 necessary for the society of the future, but the young 
lions of the Daily Telegraph in the meanwhile are 
sacrificed. A voice for every man in his country's 
government may be necessary for the society of the 
future, but meanwhile Mr. Beales and Mr. Bradlaugh 

10 are sacrificed. 

Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many faults ; 
and she has heavily paid for them in defeat, in isola- 
tion, in want of hold upon the modern world. Yet we 
in Oxford, brought up amidst the beauty and sweet- 

15 ness of that beautiful place, have not failed to seize 
one truth, — the truth that beauty and sweetness are 
essential characters of a complete human perfection. 
When I insist on this, I am all in the faith and tradi- 
tion of Oxford. I say boldly that this our sentiment 

20 for beauty and sweetness, our sentiment against 
hideousness and rawness, has been at the bottom of 
our attachment to so many beaten causes, of our 
opposition to so many triumphant movements. And 
the sentiment is true, and has never been wholly de- 

25 feated, and has shown its power even in its defeat. 
We have not won our political battles, we have not 
carried our main points, we have not stopped our ad- 
versaries' advance, we have not marched victoriously 
with the modern world ; but we have told silently upon 

30 the mind of the country, we have prepared currents of 
feeling which sap our adversaries' position when it 
seems gained, we have kept up our own communica- 



lyo SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

tions with tlie future. Look at the course of the great 
movement which shook Oxford to its centre some 
thirty years ago ! It was directed, as any one who 
reads Dr. Newman's Apology may see, against what in 
one word may be called " Liberalism." Liberalism 5 
prevailed ; it was the appointed force to do the work 
of the hour ; it was necessary, it was inevitable that it 
should prevail. The Oxford movement was broken, it 
failed ; our wrecks are scattered on every shore : — 

Quae regio in tenis nostri non plena laboris ? lO 

But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman caw 
it, and as it really broke the Oxford movement? It 
was the great middle-class liberalism, which had for 
the cardinal points of its belief the Reform Bill of 
1832, and local self-government, in politics; in the 15 
social sphere, free-trade, unrestricted competition, 
and the making of large industrial fortunes ; in the 
religious sphere, the Dissidence of Dissent and the 
Protestantism of the Protestant religion. I do not 
say that other and more intelligent forces than this 20 
were not opposed to the Oxford movement : but this 
Avas tlie force wliich really beat it ; this w^as the force 
which Dr. Newman felt himself fighting with ; this 
was the force which till only the other day seemed to 
be the paramount force in this country, and to be in 25 
possession of the future ; this was the force whose 
achievements fill Mr. Lowe with such inexpressible 
admiration, and whose rule he was so horror-struck 
to see threatened. And where is this great force of 
Philistinism now? It is thrust into the second rank, 30 
it is become a power of yesterday, it has lost the 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 171 

future. A new power has suddenly appeared, a 
power which it is impossible yet to judge fully, but 
which is certainly a wholly different force from mid- 
dle-class liberalism ; different in its cardinal points of 
5 belief, different in its tendencies in every sphere. It 
loves and admires neither the legislation of middle- 
class Parliaments, nor the local self-government of 
middle-class vestries, nor the unrestricted competition 
of middle-class industrialists, nor the dissidence of 

10 middle-class Dissent and the Protestantism of middle- 
class Protestant religion. I am not now praising this 
new force, or saying that its own ideals are better ; 
all I say is, that they are wholly different. And who 
will estimate how much the currents of feeling created 

15 by Dr. Newman's movements, the keen desire for 
beauty and sweetness which it nourished, the deep 
aversion it manifested to the hardness and vulgarity 
of middle-class liberalism, the strong light it turned 
on the hideous and grotesque illusions of middle-class 

20 Protestantism, — who will estimate how much all these 
contributed to swell the tide of secret dissatisfaction 
wliich has mined the ground under self-confident 
liberalism of the last thirty years, and has prepared 
the way for its sudden collapse and supersession ? 

25 It is in this manner that the sentiment of Oxford for 
beauty and sweetness conquers, and in this manner 
long may it continue to conquer ! 

In this manner it works to the same end as culture, 
and there is plenty of work for it yet to do. I have 

30 said that the new and more democratic force which is 
now superseding our old middle-class liberalism can- 
not yet be rightly judged. It has its main tendencies 



172 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

still to form. We hear promises of its giving us 
administrative reform, law reform, reform of educa- 
tion, and I know not what ; but those promises come 
rather from its advocates, wishing to make a good 
plea for it and to justify it for superseding middle- 5 
class liberalism, than from clear tendencies which it 
has itself yet developed. But meanwhile it has 
plenty of well-intentioned friends against whom 
culture may with advantage continue to uphold 
steadily its ideal of human perfection ; that this is lo 
an inward spiritual activity^ having for its characters 
increased sweetness^ increased light, increased life, 
increased sympathy. Mr. Bright, who has a foot in 
both worlds, the world of middle-class liberalism and 
the world of democracy, but who brings most of his 15 
ideas from the world of middle-class liberalism in 
whicli he was bred, always inclines to inculcate that 
faith in machinery to which, as we have seen. Eng- 
lishmen are so prone, and which has been the bane 
of middle-class liberalism. He complains with a 20 
sorrowful indignation of people who " appear to have 
no proper estimate of the value of the franchise"; he 
leads his disciples to believe, — what the Englishman 
is always too ready to believe, — that the having a 
vote, like the having a large family, or a large busi- 25 
ness, or large muscles, has in itself some edifying and 
perfecting effect upon human nature. Or else he 
cries out to the democracy, — '' the men," as he calls 
them, " upon whose shoulders the greatness of Eng- 
land rests," — he cries out to them : " See what you 30 
have done ! I look over this country and see the 
cities you have built, the railroads you have made, 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, 173 

the manufactures you have produced, the cargoes 
which freight the ships of the greatest mercantile 
navy the world has ever seen ! I see that you have 
converted by your labours what was once a wilder- 
5 ness, these islands, into a fruitful garden ; I know 
that you have created this wealth, and are a nation 
whose name is a word of power throughout all 
the world." Why, this is just the very style of 
laudation with which Mr. Roebuck or Mr. Lowe 

lo debauches the minds of the middle classes, and makes 
such Philistines of them. It is the same fashion of 
teaching a man to value himself not on what he is^ 
not on his progress in sweetness and light, but on 
the number of the railroads he has constructed, or 

15 the bigness of the tabernacle he has built. Only the 
middle classes are told they have done it all with 
their energy, self-reliance, and capital, and the 
democracy are told they have done it all with their 
hands and sinews. But teaching the democracy to 

20 put its trust in achievements of this kind is merely 
training them to be Philistines to take the place of 
the Philistines whom they are superseding ; and they 
too, like the middle class, will be encouraged to sit 
down at the banquet of the future without having on 

25 a wedding garment, and nothing excellent can then 
come from them. Those who know their besetting 
faults, those who have watched them and listened to 
them, or those who will read the instructive account 
recently given of them by one of themselves, the 

yi Journeyman E?igineer^ will agree that the idea which 
culture sets before us of perfection, — an increased 
spiritual activity, having for its characters increased 



174 SlVEETiVESS AND LIGHT. 

sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased 
sympathy, — is an idea which the new democracy 
needs far more than the idea of the blessedness of the 
franchise, or the wonderfulness of its own industrial 
performances. 5 

Other well-meaning friends of this new power are 
for leading it, not in the old ruts of middle-class 
Philistinism, but in ways which are naturally alluring 
to the feet of democracy, though in this country they 
are novel and untried ways. I may call them the lo 
ways of Jacobinism. Violent indignation with the 
past, abstract systems of renovation applied whole- 
sale, a new doctrine drawn up in black and white for 
elaborating down to the very smallest details a rational 
society for the future, — these are the ways of Jacob- 15 
inism. Mr. Frederic Harrison and other disciples 
of Comte, — one of them, Mr. Congreve, is an old 
friend of mine, and I am glad to have an opportunity 
of publicly expressing my respect for his talents and 
character, — are among the friends of democracy who 20 
are for leading it in paths of this kind. Mr. Frederic 
Harrison is very hostile to culture, and from a natural 
enough motive ; for culture is the eternal opponent 
of the two things which are the signal marks of 
Jacobinism, — its fierceness, and its addiction to an 25 
abstract system. Culture is always assigning to 
system-makers and systems a smaller share in the 
bent of human destiny than their friends like. A 
current in people's minds sets towards new ideas ; 
people are dissatisfied with their old narrow stock of 30 
Philistine ideas, Anglo-Saxon ideas, or any other ; 
and some man, some Bentham or Comte, who has the 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 175 

real merit of having early and strongly felt and helped 
the nt^ current, but who brings plenty of narrowness 
and mistakes of his own into his feeling and help of 
it, is credited with being the author of the whole 
5 current, the fit person to be entrusted with its regula- 
tion and to guide the human race. 

The excellent German historian of the mythology 
of Rome, Preller, relating the introduction at Rome 
under the Tarquins of the worship of Apollo, the god 
loof light, healing, and reconciliation, will have us 
observe that it was not so much the Tarquins who 
brought to Rome the new worship of Apollo, as a 
current in the mind of the Roman people which set 
powerfully at that time towards a new worship of this 
15 kind, and away from the old run of Latin and Sabine 
religious ideas. In a similar way, culture directs our 
attention to the natural current there is in human 
affairs, and to its continual working, and will not let 
us rivet our faith upon any one man and his doings. 
20 It makes us see not only his good side, but also how 
much in him was of necessity limited and transient ; 
nay, it even feels a pleasure, a sense of an increased 
freedom and of an ampler future, in so doing. 

I remember, when I was under the influence of a 
25 mind to which I feel the greatest obligations, the 
mind of a man who was the very incarnation of sanity 
and clear sense, a man the most considerable, it seems 
to me, whom America has yet produced, — Benjamin 
Franklin,— I remember the relief with which, after 
30 long feeling the sway of Franklin's imperturbable 
common-sense, I came upon a project of his for a new 
version of the Book of Job, to replace the old ver- 



176 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

sion, the style of which, says Franklin, has become 
obsolete, and thence less agreeable. '* I give," he 
continues, " a few verses, which may serve as a 
sample of the kind of version I would recommend." 
We all recollect the famous verse in our translation : 5 
" Then Satan answered the Lord and said : * Doth 
Job fear God for nought ? ' " Franklin makes this : 
"Does your Majesty imagine that Job's good conduct 
is the effect of mere personal attachment and affec- 
tion? " I well remember how, when first I read that, 10 
I drew a deep breath of relief, and said to myself : 
"After all, there is a stretch of humanity beyond 
Franklin's victorious good sense ! " So, after hearing 
Bentham cried loudly up as the renovator of modern 
society, and Bentham's mind and ideas proposed as 15 
the rulers of our future, I open the Deontology. There 
I read : " While Xenophon was writing his history 
and Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato 
were talking nonsense under pretence of talking wis- 
dom and morality. This morality of theirs consisted 20 
in words ; this wisdom of theirs was the denial of 
matters known to every man's experience." From 
the moment of reading that, I am delivered from the 
bondage of Bentham ! the fanaticism of his adherents 
can touch me no longer. I feel the inadequacy of 25 
liis mind and ideas for supplying the rule of human 
society, for perfection. 

Culture tends always thus to deal with the men of 
a system, of disciples, of a school ; with men like 
Comte, or the late Mr. Buckle, or Mr. Mill. How- 30 
ever much it may find to admire in these personages, 
or in some of them, it nevertheless remembers the 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, I77 

text : "Be not ye called Rabbi ! " and it soon passes 
on from any Rabbi. But Jacobinism loves a Rabbi ; 
it does not want to pass on from its Rabbi in pursuit 
of a future and still unreached perfection ; it wants 
5 its Rabbi and his ideas to stand for perfection, that 
they may with the more authority recast the world ; 
and for Jacobinism, therefore, culture, — eternally 
passing onwards and seeking, — is an impertinence 
and an offence. But culture, just because it resists 

lothis tendency of Jacobinism to impose on us a man 
with limitations and errors of his own along with the 
true ideas of which he is the organ, really does the 
world and Jacobinism itself a service. 

So, too, Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the past 

15 and of those whom it makes liable for the sins of the 
past, cannot away with the inexhaustible indulgence 
proper to culture, the consideration of circumstances, 
the severe judgment of actions joined to the merciful 
judgment of persons. "The man of culture is in 

20 politics," cries Mr. Frederic Harrison, "one of the 
poorest mortals alive ! " Mr. Frederic Harrison wants 
to be doing business, and he complains that the man 
of culture stops him with a " turn for small fault- 
finding, love of selfish ease, and indecision in action." 

25 Of what use is culture, he asks, except for "a critic 
of new books or a professor of belles-lettres ? " Why, 
it is of use because, in presence of the fierce exaspera- 
tion which breathes, or rather, I may say, hisses 
through the whole production in which Mr. Frederic 

30 Harrison asks that question, it reminds us that the 
perfection of human nature is sweetness and light. 
It is of use because, like religion, — that other effort 



178 SIVEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

after perfection, — it testifies that, where bitter envy- 
ing and strife are, there is confusion and every evil 
work. 

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of 
sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness 5 
and light, works to make reason and the will of God 
prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works 
for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks 
beyond machinery, culture hates hatred ; culture has 
one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. 10 
lU ias one even yet "greater ! — the passion for making ^ 
_them_^r-^zz^ziZ.— It is not satisfied till we all come to a 
perfect man ; it knows that the sweetness and light 
of the few must be imperfect until the raw and un- 
kindled masses of humanity are touched with sweet- 15 
ness and light. If I have not shrunk from saying 
that we must work for sweetness and light, so neither 
have I shrunk from saying that we must have a broad 
basis, must have sweetness and light for as many as 
possible. Again and again I have insisted how those 20 
are the happy moments of humanity, how those are 
the marking epochs of a people's life, how those are 
the flowering times for literature and art and all the 
creative power of genius, when there is a national glow 
of life and thought, when the whole of society is in 25 
the fullest measure permeated by thought, sensible to 
beauty, intelligent and alive. Only it must be real 
thought and real beauty ; real sweetness and real 
light. Plenty of people will try to give the masses, 
as they call them, an intellectual food prepared and 30 
adapted in the way they think proper for the actual 
condition of the masses. The ordinary popular litera- 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 179 

ture is an example of this way of working on the 
masses. Plenty of people will try to indoctrinate the 
masses with the set of ideas and judgments constitut- 
ing the creed of their own profession or party. Our 
5 religious and political organisations give an example 
of this way of working on the masses. I condemn 
neither way ; but culture works differently. It does 
not try to teach down to the level of inferior classes ; 
it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its 

10 own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords. 
It seeks to do away with classes ; to make the best 
that has been thought and known in the world current 
everywhere ; to make all men live in an atmosphere 
of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as 

15 it uses them itself, freely, — nourislied, and not bound 
by them. 

This is the social idea ; and the men of culture are 
the true apostles of equality. The great men of cul- 
ture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, 

20 for making prevail, for carrying from one end of 
society to the other, the best knowledge, the best 
ideas of their time ; who have laboured to divest 
knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, 
abstract, professional, exclusive ; to humanise it, to 

25 make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated 
and learned, yet still remaining the best knowledge 
and thought of the time, and a true source, therefore, 
of sweetness and light. Such a man was Abelard in 
the Middle Ages, in spite of all his imperfections ; 

30 and thence the boundless emotion and enthusiasm 
which Abelard excited. Such were Lessing and 
Herder in Germany, at the end of the last century ; 



i8o SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

and their services to Germany were in this way in- 
estimably precious. Generations will pass, and literary 
monuments will accumulate, and works far more per- 
fect than the works of Lessing and Herder will be 
produced in Germany ; and yet the names of these 5 
two men will fill a German with a reverence and 
enthusiasm such as the names of the most gifted 
masters will hardly awaken. And why ? Because 
they humanised knowledge ; because they broadened 
the basis of life and intelligence ; because they worked lo 
powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light, to make 
reason and the will of God prevail. With Saint 
Augustine they said : " Let us not leave thee alone 
to make in the secret of thy knowledge, as thou didst 
before the creation of the firmament, the division of 15 
light from darkness ; let the children of thy spirit, 
placed in their firmament, make their light shine upon 
the earth, mark the division of night and day, and 
announce the revolution of the times ; for the old 
order is passed, and the new arises ; the night is 20 
spent, the day is come forth ; and thou shalt crown 
the year with thy blessing, when thou shalt send forth 
labourers into thy harvest sown by other hands than 
theirs ; when thou shalt send forth new labourers to 
new seed-times, whereof the harvest shall be not yet." 25 
— Culture and Anarchy^ ed. 1896, pp. 5-39. 



Ibcbraism anD Ibellenfsm* 

This fundamental ground is our preference of doing 
to thinking. Now this preference is a main element 
in our nature, and as we study it we find ourselves 
opening up a number of large questions on every side. 
5 Let me go back for a moment to Bishop Wilson, 
who says : *' First, never go against the best light you 
have ; secondly, take care that your light be not dark- 
ness." We show, as a nation, laudable energy and 
persistence in walking according to the best light we 

lohave, but are not quite careful enough, perhaps, to see 
that our light be not darkness. This is only another 
version of the old story that energy is our strong 
point and favourable characteristic, rather than intel- 
ligence. But we may give to this idea a more general 

15 form still, in which it will have a yet larger range of 
application. We may regard this energy driving at 
practice, this paramount sense of the obligation of 
duty, self-control, and work, this earnestness in going 
manfully with the best light we have, as one force. 

20 And we may regard the intelligence driving at those 
, ideas which are, after all, the basis of right practice, 
the ardent sense for all the new and changing com- 
binations of them which man's development brings 
with it, the indomitable impulse to know and adjust 

25 them perfectly, as another force. And these two 
forces we may regard as in some sense rivals, — rivals 

181 



l83 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 

not by the necessity of their own nature, but as exhib- 
ited in man and his history, — and rivals dividing the 
empire of the world between them. And to give 
these forces names from the two races of men who 
have supplied the most signal and splendid manifesta- 5 
tions of them, we may call them respectively the forces 
of Hebraism and Hellenism. Hebraism and Hellen- 
ism, — between these two points of influence moves our 
world. At one time it feels more powerfully the 
attraction of one of them, at another time of the lo 
other ; and it ought to be, though it never is, evenly 
and happily balanced between them. 

The final aim of both. Hellenism and Hebraism, as 
of all great spiritual disciplines, is no doubt the same: 
man's perfection or salvation. The very language 15 
which they both of them use in schooling us to reach 
this aim is often identical. Even when their language 
indicates by variation, — sometimes a broad variation, 
often a but slight and subtle variation, — the different 
courses of thought which are uppermost in each dis- 20 
cipline, even then the unity of the final end and aim 
is still apparent. To employ the actual words of that 
discipline with which we ourselves are all of us most 
familiar, and the words of which, therefore, come 
most home to us, that final end and aim is *' that we 25 
might be partakers of the divine nature." These are 
the words of a Hebrew apostle, but of Hellenism and 
Hebraism alike this is, I say, the aim. When the 
two are confronted, as they very often are confronted, 
it is nearly always with what I may call a rhetorical 30 
purpose ; the speaker's whole design is to exalt and 
enthrone one of the two, and he uses the other only as 



HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 183 

a foil and to enable him the better to give effect to his 
purpose. Obviously, with us, it is usually Hellenism 
which is thus reduced to minister to the triumph of 
Hebraism. There is a sermon on Greece and the 
5 Greek spirit by a man never to be mentioned without 
interest and respect, Frederick Robertson, in which 
this rhetorical use of Greece and the Greek spirit, 
and the inadequate exhibition of them necessarily 
consequent upon this, is almost ludicrous, and would 

/.o be censurable if it were not to be explained by the 
exigencies of a sermon. On the other hand, Heinrich 
Heine, and other writers of his sort, give us the 
spectacle of the tables completely turned, and of 
Hebraism brought in just as a foil and contrast to 

15 Hellenism, and to make the superiority of Hellenism 
more manifest. In both these cases there is injustice 
and misrepresentation. The aim and end of both 
Hebraism and Hellenism is, as I have said, one 
and the same, and this aim and end is august and 

20 admirable. 

Still, they pursue this aim by very different courses. 
The uppermost idea with Hellenism is to see things as 
they really are ; the uppermost idea with Hebraism 
is conduct and obedience. Nothing can do away with 

25 this ineffaceable difference. The Greek quarrel with 
the body and its desires is, that they hinder right 
thinking ; the Hebrew quarrel with them is, that they 
hinder right acting. '' He that keepeth the law, 
happy is he ;" " Blessed is the man that feareth the 

no Eternal, that delighteth greatly in his command- 
ments ;" — that is the Hebrew notion of felicity ; and, 
pursued with passion and tenacity, this notion would 



1 84 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 

not let the H-ebrew rest till, as is well known, he had 
at last got out of the law a network of prescriptions 
to enwrap his whole life, to govern every moment of 
it, every impulse, every action. The Greek notion of 
felicity, on the other hand, is perfectly conveyed in 5 
these words of a great French moralist : Cesi le 
bonheiir des hommes^ — when ? when they abhor that 
which is evil ? — no ; when they exercise themselves 
in the law of the Lord day and night ? — no ; when 
they die daily ? — no ; when they walk about the New 10 
Jerusalem with palms in their hands ? — no ; but when 
they think aright, when their thought hits : guaiid 
Us pensent juste. At the bottom of both the Greek 
and the Hebrew notion is the desire, native in man, 
for reason and the will of God, the feeling after the 15 
universal order, — in a word, the love of God. But 
while Hebraism seizes upon certain plain, capital 
intimations of the universal order, and rivets itself, 
one may say, with unequalled grandeur of earnestness 
and intensity on the study and observance of them, 20 
the bent of Hellenism is to follow, with flexible activ- 
ity, the whole play of the universal order, to be 
apprehensive of missing any part of it, of sacrificing 
one part to another, to slip away from resting in this 
or that intimation of it, however capital. An un- 25 
clouded clearness of mind, an unimpeded play of 
thought, is what this bent drives at. The governing 
idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of co7isciousness ; that 
of Hebraism, strictness of conscience. 

Christianity changed nothing in this essential bent of 30 
Hebraism to set doing above knowing. Self-conquest, 
self-devotion, the following not our own individual 



HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 1^5 

will, but the will of God, obedience^ is the fundamental 
idea of this form, also, of the discipline to which we 
have attached the general name of Hebraism. Only, 
as the old law and the network of prescriptions with 
5 which it enveloped human life were evidently a motive- 
power not driving and searching enough to produce 
the result aimed at, — patient continuance in well- 
doing, self-conquest, — Christianity substituted for 
them boundless devotion to that inspiring and affect- 

loing pattern of self-conquest offered by Jesus Christ ; 
and by the new motive-power, of which the essence 
was this, though the love and admiration of Christian 
churches have for centuries been employed in varying, 
amplifying, and adorning the plain description of it, 

15 Christianity, as St. Paul truly says, " establishes the 
law," and in the strength of the ampler power which 
she has thus supplied to fulfil it, has accomplished the 
miracles, which we all see, of her history. 

So long as we do not forget that both Hellenism and 

20 Hebraism are profound and admirable manifestations 
of man's life, tendencies, and powers, and that both of 
them aim at a like final result, we can hardly insist too 
strongly on the divergence of line and of operation 
with which they proceed. It is a divergence so great 

25 that it most truly, as the prophet Zechariah says, 
*' has raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O 
Greece ! " The difference whether it is by doing or 
by knowing that we set most store, and the practical 
consequences which follow from this difference, leave 

30 their mark on all the history of our race and of its 
development. Language may be abundantly quoted 
from both Hellenism and Hebraism to make it seem 



l86 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 

that one follows the same current as the other towards 
the same goal. They are, truly, borne towards the 
same goal ; but the currents which bear them are 
^infinitely different. It is true, Solomon will praise 
knowing : " Understanding is a well-spring of life unto 5 
him that hath it." And in the New Testament, again, 
Jesus Christ is a *' light," and '* truth makes us free/' 
It is true, Aristotle will undervalue knowing : " In 
what concerns virtue," says he, "three things are 
necessary — knowledge, deliberate will, and persever- lo 
ance ; but, whereas the two last are all-important, the 
first is a matter of little importance." It is true that 
with the same impatience with which St. James 
enjoins a man to be not a forgetful hearer, but a doer 
of the 7iiork, Epictetus exhorts us to do what we have 15 
demonstrated to ourselves we ought to do ; or he 
taunts us with futility, for being armed at all points to 
prove that lying is wrong, yet all the time continuing 
to lie. It is true, Plato, in words which are almost the 
words of the New Testament or the Imitation, calls 20 
life a learning to die. But underneath the superficial 
agreement the fundamental divergence still subsists. 
The understanding of Solomon is " the walking in the 
way of the commandments "; this is " the way of 
peace," and it is of this that blessedness comes. In 25 
the New Testament, the truth which gives us the 
peace of God and makes us free, is the love of Christ 
constraining us to crucify, as he did, and with a like 
purpose of moral regeneration, the flesh with its affec- 
tions and lusts, and thus establishing as we have seen, 30 
the law. The moral virtues, on the other hand, are with 
Aristotle but the porch and access to the intellectual. 



HEBRAISM AlSfD HELLENISM. 1S7 

and with these last is blessedness. That partaking of 
the divine life, which both Hellenism and Hebraism, 
as we have said, fix as their crowning aim, Plato 
expressly denies to the man of practical virtue merely, 
5 of self-conquest with any other motive than that of per- 
fect intellectual vision. He reserves it for the lover of 
pure knowledge, as seeing things as they really are, — 

the (juXofxaOyjg. 

Both Hellenism and Hebraism arise out of the 

10 wants of human nature, and address themselves to 
satisfying those wants. But their methods are so 
different, they lay stress on such different points, 
and call into being by their respective disciplines 
such different activities, that the face which human 

15 nature presents when it passes from the hands of 
one of them to those of the other, is no longer the 
same. To get rid of one's ignorance, to see things 
as they are, and by seeing them as they are to see 
them in their beauty, is the simple and attractive 

20 ideal which Hellenism holds out before human 
nature ; and from the simplicity and charm of this 
ideal, Hellenism, and human life in the hands of 
Hellenism, is invested with a kind of aerial ease, 
clearness, and radiancy ; they are full of what we 

25 call sweetness and light. Difficulties are kept out 
of view, and the beauty and rationalness of the 
ideal have all our thoughts. "The best man is he 
who most tries to perfect himself, and the happiest 
man is he who most feels that he is perfecting him- 

30 self," — this account of the matter by Socrates, the 
true Socrates of the Memorabilia^ has something so 
simple, spontaneous, and unsophisticated about it, 



1 88 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 

that it seems to fill us with clearness and hope when 
we hear it. But there is a saying which I have 
heard attributed to Mr. Carlyle about Socrates, — 
a very happy saying, whether it is really Mr. Car- 
lyle's or not, — which excellently marks the essential 5 
point in which Hebraism differs from Hellenism. 
"Socrates," this saying goes, "is terribly at ease in 
Ziony Hebraism, — and here is the source of its 
wonderful strength, — has always been severely pre- 
occupied with an awful sense of the impossibility of 10 
being at ease in Zion ; of the difficulties which oppose 
themselves to man's pursuit or attainment of that 
perfection of which Socrates talks so hopefully, and, 
as from this point of view one might almost say, so 
glibly. It is all very well to talk of getting rid of 15 
one's ignorance, of seeing things in their reality, 
seeing them in their beauty ; but how is this to be 
done when there is something which thwarts and 
spoils all our efforts ? 

This something is sin j and the space which sin 20 
fills in Hebraism, as compared with Hellenism, is 
indeed prodigious. This obstacle to perfection fills 
the whole scene, and perfection appears remote and 
rising away from earth, in the background. Under 
the name of sin, the difficulties of knowing oneself 25 
and conquering oneself which impede man's passage 
to perfection, become, for Hebraism, a positive, active 
entity hostile to man, a mysterious power which I 
heard Dr. Pusey the other day, in one of his impres- 
sive sermons, compare to a hideous hunchback seated 30 
on our shoulders, and which it is the main business 
of our lives to hate and oppose. The discipline of 



HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. i«9 

the Old Testament may be summed up as a disci- 
pline teaching us to abhor and flee from sin ; the 
discipline of the New Testament, as a discipline 
teaching us to die to it. As Hellenism speaks of 
5 thinking clearly, seeing things in their essence and 
beauty, as a grand and precious feat for man to 
achieve, so Hebraism speaks of becoming conscious 
of sin, of awakening to a sense of sin, as a feat of 
this kind. It is obvious to what wide divergence 

10 these differing tendencies, actively followed, must 

- lead. As one passes and repasses from Hellenism to 
Hebraism, from Plato to St. Paul, one feels inclined 
to rub one's eyes and ask oneself whether man is 
indeed a gentle and simple being, showing the traces 

15 of a noble and divine nature ; or an unhappy chained 
captive, labouring with groanings that cannot be ut- 
tered to free himself from the body of this death. 

Apparently it was the Hellenic conception of 
human nature which was unsound, for the world 

20 could not live by it. Absolutely to call it unsound, 
however, is to fall into the common error of its 
Hebraising enemies ; but it was unsound at that 
particular moment of man's development, it was pre- 
mature. The indispensable basis of conduct and 

25 self-control, the platform upon which alone the per- 
fection aimed at by Greece can come into bloom, was 
not to be reached by our race so easily ; centuries of 
probation and discipline were needed to bring us to 
it. Therefore the bright promise of Hellenism faded, 

30 and Hebraism ruled the world. Then was seen that 
astonishing spectacle, so well marked by the often- 
quoted words of the prophet Zechariah, when men of 



igo HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 

all languages and nations took hold of the skirt of 
him that was a Jew, saying : — ^^We will go with you^ 
for we have heard that God is with you'* And the 
Hebraism which thus received and ruled a world all 
gone out of the way and altogether become unprofit- 5 
able, was, and could not but be, the later, the more 
spiritual, the more attractive development of Hebra- 
ism. It was Christianity ; that is to say, Hebraism 
aiming at self-conquest and rescue from the thrall of 
vile affections, not by obedience to the letter of a law, lo 
but by conformity to the image of a self-sacrificing 
example. To a world stricken with moral enervation 
Christianity offered its spectacle of an inspired self- 
sacrifice ; to men who refused themselves nothing, it 
showed one who refused himself everything; — ";;{yi5 
Saviour bariished joy !'' says George Herbert. When 
the alma Venus^ the life-giving and joy-giving power 
of nature, so fondly cherished by the Pagan world, 
could not save her followers from self-dissatisfaction 
and ennui, the severe words of the apostle came brae- 20 
ingly and refreshingly : " Let no man deceive you 
with vain words, for because of these things cometh 
the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience." 
Through age after age and generation after genera- 
tion, our race, or all that part of our race which was 25 
most living and progressive, was baptized into a death; 
and endeavoured, by suffering in the flesh, to cease 
from sin. Of this endeavour, the animating labours 
and afflictions of early Christianity, the touching 
asceticism of mediaeval Christianity, are the great his- 30 
torical manifestations. Literary monuments of it, 
each in its own way incomparable, remain in the 



[ HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 191 

Epistles of St. Paul, in St. Augustine's Confessions, 
and in the two original and simplest books of the 
Imitation,' 

Of two disciplines laying their main stress, the 
5 one, on clear intelligence, the other, on firm obedi- 
ence ; the one, on comprehensively knowing tlie 
grounds of one's duty, the other, on diligently prac- 
tising it ; the one, on taking all possible care (to use 
Bishop Wilson's words again) that the light we have 

10 be not darkness, the other, that according to the 
best light we have we diligently walk, — the priority 
naturally belongs to that discipline which braces all 
man's moral powers, and founds for him an indis- 
pensable basis of character. And, therefore, it is 

15 justly said of the Jewish people, who were charged 
with setting powerfully forth that side of the divine 
order to which the words conscience and self-conquest 
point, that they were " entrusted with the oracles of 
God"; as it is justly said of Christianity, which fol- 

20 lowed Judaism and which set forth this side with 
a much deeper effectiveness and a much wider influ- 
ence, that the wisdom of the old Pagan world was 
foolishness compared to it. No words of devotion 
and admiration can be too strong to render thanks to 

25 these beneficent forces which have so borne forward 
humanity in its appointed work of coming to the 
knowledge and possession of itself ; above all, in 
those great moments when their action was the whole- 
somest and the most necessary. 

30 But the evolution of these forces, separately and in 
themselves, is not the whole evolution of humanity, — 
* The two first books. 



192 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. ||B 

their single history is not the whole history of man ; 
whereas their admirers are always apt to make it 
stand for the whole history. Hebraism and Hellenism 
are, neither of them, the laiv of human development, 
as their admirers are prone to make them ; they are, 5 
each of them, contributions to human development, — 
august contributions, invaluable contributions ; and 
each showing itself to us more august, more invaluable, 
more preponderant over the other, according to the 
moment in which we take them and the relation in 10 
which we stand to them. The nations of our modern 
world, children of that immense and salutary move- 
ment which broke up the Pagan world, inevitably 
stand to Hellenism in a relation which dwarfs it, and 
to Hebraism in a relation which magnifies it. They 15 
are inevitably prone to take Hebraism as the law of 
human development, and not as simply a contribution 
to it, however precious. And yet the lesson must 
perforce be learned, that the human spirit is wider 
than the most priceless of the forces which bear it 20 
onward, and that to the whole development of man 
Hebraism itself is, like Hellenism, but a contribution. 
— Culture and Anarchy, ed. 1896, pp. 109-121. 



^be Bangers ot Puritanism, 

The Puritan's great danger is that he imagines 
himself in possession of a rule telling him the wiuin 
necessariuin, or one thing needful, and that he then 
remains satisfied with a very crude conception of what 
5 this rule really is and what it tells him, thinks he has 
now knowledge and henceforth needs only to act, and, 
in this dangerous state of assurance and self-satisfac- 
tion, proceeds to give full swing to a number of the 
instincts of his ordinary self. Some of the instincts 

loof his ordinary self he has, by the help of his rule of 
life, conquered ; but others which he has not con- 
quered by this help he is so far from perceiving to 
need subjugation, and to be instincts of an inferior 
self, that he even fancies it to be his right and duty, 

15 in virtue of having conquered a limited part of him- 
self, to give unchecked swing to the remainder. He 
is, I say, a victim of Hebraism, of the tendency to 
cultivate strictness of conscience rather than spon- 
taneity of consciousness. And what he wants is a 

20 larger conception of human nature, showing him the 
number of other points at which his nature must 
come to its best, besides the points which he himself 
knows and thinks of. There is no U7ium necessarium, 
or one thing needful, which can free human nature 

25 from the obligation of trying to come to its best 
at all these points. The real unum necessariuvi for 

193 



194 THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM. 

US is to come to our best at all points. Instead of 
our " one thing needful, " justifying in us vulgarity, 
hideousness, ignorance, violence, — our vulgarity, 
hideousness, ignorance, violence, are really so many 
touchstones which try our one thing needful, and 5 
which prove that in the state, at any rate, in which 
we ourselves have it, it is not all we want. And as 
the force which encourages us to stand staunch and 
fast by the rule and ground we have is Hebraism, so 
the force which encourages us to go back upon this lo 
rule, and to try the very ground on which we appear 
to stand, is Hellenism, — a turn for giving our con- 
sciousness free play and enlarging its range. And 
what I say is, not that Hellenism is always for every- 
body more wanted than Hebraism, but that for Mr. i5 
Murphy at this particular moment, and for the great 
majority of us his fellow-countrymen, it is more 
wanted. 

Nothing is more striking than to observe in how 
many ways a limited conception of human nature, the 20 
notion of a one thing needful, a one side in us to be 
made uppermost, the disregard of a full and harmoni- 
ous development of ourselves, tells inj urio usly on our 
thinking and^^^ting._ In the first place, "our hold 
upon the rule or standard, to which we look for our 25 
one thing needful, tends to become less and less near 
and vital, our conception of it more and more 
mechanical, and more and more unlike the thing 
itself as it was conceived in the mind where it origi- 
nated. The dealings of Puritanism with the writings 30 
of St. Paul, afford a noteworthy illustration of this. 
Nowhere so much as in the writings of St. Paul, and 



THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM. 195 

in that great apostle's greatest work, the Epistle to 
the Romans, has Puritanism found what seemed to 
furnish it with the one thing needful, and to give it 
canons of truth absolute and final. Now all writings, 
5 as has been already said, even the most precious writ- 
ings and the most fruitful, must inevitably, from the 
very nature of things, be but contributions to human 
thought and human development, which extend wider 
than they do. Indeed, St. Paul, in the very Epistle 

10 of which we are speaking, shows, when he asks, 
** Who hath known the mind of the Lord ? " — who 
hath known, that is, the true and divine order of 
things in its entirety, — that he himself acknowledges 
this fully. And we have already pointed out in 

15 another Epistle of St. Paul a great and vital idea of 
the human spirit, — the idea of immortality, — trans- 
cending and overlapping, so to speak, the expositor's 
power to give it adequate definition and expression. 
But quite distinct from the question whether St. 

2o Paul's expression, or any man's expression, can be a 
perfect and final expression of truth, comes the ques- 
tion whether we rightly seize and understand his 
expression as its exists. Now, perfectly to seize 
another man's meaning, as it stood in his own mind, 

25 is not easy ; especially when the man is separated 
from us by such differences of race, training, time, 
and circumstances as St. Paul. But there are degrees 
of nearness of getting at a man's meaning ; and 
though we cannot arrive quite at what St. Paul had 

30 in his mind, yet we may come near it. And who, 
that comes thus near it, must not feel how terms 
which St. Paul employs, in trying to follow with hig 



19^ THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM. 

analysis of such profound power and originality some 
of the most delicate, intricate, obscure, and contra- 
dictory workings and states of the human spirit, are 
detached and employed by Puritanism, not in the 
connected and fluid way in which St. Paul employs 5 
them, and for which alone words are really meant, 
but in an isolated, fixed, mechanical way, as if they 
were talismans ; and how all trace and sense of St. 
Paul's true movement of ideas, and sustained masterly 
analysis, is thus lost ? Who, I say, that has watched lo 
Puritanism, — the force which so strongly Hebraises, 
which so takes St. Paul's writings as something abso- 
lute and final, containing the one thing needful, — 
handle such terms 2^s grace, faith, election^ righteous- 
ness^ but must feel, not only that these terms have for 15 
the mind of Puritanism a sense false and misleading, 
but also that this sense is the most monstrous and 
grotesque caricature of the sense of St. Paul, and that 
his true meaning is by these worshippers of his words 
altogether lost ? 20 

Or to take another eminent example, in which not 
Puritanism only, but, one may say, the whole re- 
ligious world, by their mechanical use of St. Paul's 
writings, can be shown to miss or change his real 
meaning. The whole religious world, one may say, 25 
use now the word resurrection, — a word which is so 
often in their thoughts and on their lips, and which 
they find so often in St. Paul's writings, — in one sense 
only. They use it to mean a rising again after the 
physical death of the body. Now it is quite true 30 
that St. Paul speaks of resurrection in this sense, 
that he tries to describe and explain it, and that he 



THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM. 197 

condemns those who doubt and deny it. But it is 
true, also, that in nine cases out of ten where St. 
Paul thinks and speaks of resurrection, he thinks and 
speaks of it in a sense different from this ; — in the 

5 sense of a rising to a new life before the physical 
death of the body, and not after it. The idea on 
which we have already touched, the profound idea of 
being baptized into the death of the great exemplar 
of self-devotion and self-annulment, of repeating in 

10 our own person, by virtue of identification with our 
exemplar, his course of self-devotion and self-annul- 
ment, and of thus coming, within the limits of our 
present life, to a new life, in which, as in the death 
going before it, we are identified with our exemplar, 

15 — this is the fruitful and original conception of being 
risen with Christ which possesses the mind of St. Paul, 
and this is the central point round which, with such 
incomparable emotion and eloquence, all his teaching 
moves. For him, the life after our physical death is 

20 really in the main but a consequence and continuation 
of the inexhaustible energy of the new life thus origi- 
nated on this side the grave. This grand Pauline 
idea of Christian resurrection is worthily rehearsed Jn 
one of the noblest collects of the Prayer-Book, and is 

25 destined, no doubt, to fill a more and more important 
place in the Christianity of the future. But mean- 
while, almost as signal as the essentialness of this 
characteristic idea in St. Paul's teaching, is the com- 
pleteness with which the worshippers of St. Paul's 

30 words as an absolute final expression of saving truth 
have lost it, and have substituted for the apostle's 
living and ne^r conception of a resurrection now, their 



198 THE .Q ANGERS OF PURITANISM. 

mechanical and remote conception of a resurrection ■ 
hereafter. 

In short, so fatal is the notion of possessing, even 
in the most precious words or standards, the one 
thing needful, of having in them, once for all, a full 5 
and sufficient measure of light to guide us, and of 
there being no duty left for us except to make our 
practice square exactly with them, — so fatal, I say, is 
this notion to the right knowledge and comprehension 
of the very words or standards we thus adopt, and to 10 
such strange distortions and perversions of them does 
it inevitably lead, that whenever we hear that common- 
place which Hebraism, if we venture to inquire what 
a man knows, is so apt to bring out against us, in 
disparagement of what we call culture, and in praise 15 
of a man's sticking to the one thing needful, — he 
kno7VSy says Hebraism, his Bible ! — whenever we hear 
this said, we may, without any elaborate defence 
of culture, content ourselves with answering simply : 
*' No man, who knows nothing else, knows even his 20 
Bible." 

Now the force which we have so much neglected, 
Hellenism, may be liable to fail in moral strength 
and earnestness, but by the law of its nature, — the 
very same law which makes it sometimes deficient in 25 
intensity when intensity is required, — it opposes 
itself to the notion of cutting our being in two, of 
attributing to one part the dignity of dealing with 
the one thing needful, and leaving the other part to 
take its chance, which is the bane of Hebraism. 30 
Essential in Hellenism is the impulse to the develop- 
ment of the whole man, to connecting and harmon- 



THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM. 199 

ising all parts of him, perfecting all, leaving none to 
take their chance. 

The characteristic bent of Hellenism, as has been 
said, is to find the intelligible law of things, to see 
5 them in their true nature and as they really are. 
But many things are not seen in their true nature 
and as they really are, unless they are seen as beauti- 
ful. Behaviour is not intelligible, does not account 
for itself to the mind and show the reason for its 

lo existing, unless it is beautiful. The same with dis- 
course, the same with song, the same with worship, 
all of them modes in which man proves his activity 
and expresses himself. To think that when one pro- 
duces in these what is mean, or vulgar, or hideous, 

15 one can be permitted to plead that one has that 
within which passes show ; to suppose that the pos- 
session of what benefits and satisfies one part of our 
being can make allowable either discourse like Mr. 
Murphy's, or poetry like the hymns we all hear, or 

20 places of worship like the chapels we all see, — this it 
is abhorrent to the nature of Hellenism to concede. 
And to be, like our honoured and justly honoured 
Faraday, a great natural philosopher with one side of 
his being and a Sandemanian with the other, would to 

25 Archimedes have been impossible. 

It is evident to what a many-sided perfecting of 
man's powers and activities this demand of Hellenism 
for satisfaction to be given to the mind by everything 
which we do, is calculated to impel our race. It has 

30 its dangers, as has been fully granted. The notion of 
this sort of equipollency in man's modes of activity 
may lead to moral relaxation ; what we do not make 



5fOO THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM. 

our one thing needful, we may come to treat not 
enough as if it were needful, though it is indeed very- 
needful and at the same time very hard. Still, what 
side in us has not its dangers, and which of our 
impulses can be a talisman to give us perfection out- 5 
right, and not merely a help to bring us towards it ? 
Has not Hebraism, as we have shown, its dangers as 
well as Hellenism ? or have we used so excessively 
the tendencies in ourselves to which Hellenism makes 
appeal, that we are now suffering from it ? Are we lo 
not, on the contrary, now suffering because we have 
not enough used these tendencies as a help towards 
perfection ? 

For we see whither it has brought us, the long 
exclusive predominance of Hebraism, — the insisting 15 
on perfection in one part of our nature and not in all ; 
the singling out the moral side, the side of obedience 
and action, for such intent regard ; making strictness 
of the moral conscience so far the principal thing, 
and putting off for hereafter and for another world 20 
the care for being complete at all points, the full and 
harmonious development of our humanity. Instead 
of watching and following on its ways the desire 
which, as Plato says, " for ever through all the 
universe tends towards that which is lovely," we 25 
think that the world has settled its accounts with 
this desire, knows what this desire wants of it, and 
that all the impulses of our ordinary self which do 
not conflict with the terms of this settlement, in our 
narrow view of it, we may follow unrestrainedly, 30 
under the sanction of some such text as '* Not sloth- 
ful in business," or, '' Whatsoever thy hand findeth 



1 



THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM. 201 

to do, do it with all thy might," or something else of 
the same kind. And to any of these impulses we 
soon come to give that same character of a mechani- 
cal, absolute law, which we give to our religion ; we 
5 regard it, as we do our religion, as an object for 
strictness of conscience, not for spontaneity of con- 
sciousness ; for unremitting adherence on its own 
account, not for going back upon, viewing in its con- 
nection with other things, and adjusting to a number 

10 of changing circumstances. We treat it, in short, just 
as we treat our religion, — as machinery. It is in this 
way that the Barbarians treat their bodily exercises, 
the Philistines their business, Mr. Spurgeon his volun- 
taryism, Mr. Bright the assertion of personal liberty, 

15 Mr. Beales the right of meeting in Hyde Park. In 
all those cases what is needed is a freer play of con- 
sciousness upon the object of pursuit ; and in all of 
them Hebraism, the valuing staunchness and earnest- 
ness more than this free play, the entire subordina- 

20 tion of thinking to doing, has led to a mistaken and 
misleading treatment of things. 

The newspapers a short time ago contained an 
account of the suicide of a Mr. Smith, secretary to 
some insurance company, who, it was said, " laboured 

25 under the apprehension that he would come to poverty, 
and that he was eternally lost." And when I read 
these words, it occurred to me that the poor man who 
came to such a mournful end was, in truth, a kind of 
type, — by the selection of his two grand objects of 

30 concern, by their isolation from everything else, and 
their juxtaposition to one another, — of all the 
strongest, most respectable, and most representative 



20^ THE DAiVGERS OF PURITANISM. 

part of our nation. " He laboured under the appre- 
hension that he would come to poverty, and that he 
was eternally lost." The whole middle class have a 
conception of things, — a conception which makes us 
call them Philistines, — just like that of this poor man ; 5 
though we are seldom, of course, shocked by seeing it 
take the distressing, violently morbid, and fatal turn, 
which it took with him. But how generally, with how 
many of us, are the main concerns of life limited to 
these two : the concern for making money, and the lo 
concern for saving our souls ! And how entirely does 
the narrow and mechanical conception of our secular 
business proceed from a narrow and mechanical con- 
ception of our religious business ! What havoc do the 
united conceptions make of our lives ! It is because 15 
the second-named of these two master-concerns pre- 
sents to us the one thing needful in so fixed, nar- 
row, and mechanical a way, that so ignoble a fellow 
master-concern to it as the first-named becomes possi- 
ble ; and, having been once admitted, takes the same 20 
rigid and absolute character as the other. 

Poor Mr. Smith had sincerely the nobler master- 
concern as well as the meaner, — the concern for saving 
his soul (according to the narrow and mechanical con- 
ception which Puritanism has of what the salvation 25 
of the soul is), as well as the concern for making 
money. But let us remark how many people there 
are, especially outside the limits of the serious and 
conscientious middle class to which Mr. Smith be- 
longed, who take up with a meaner master-concern, — 30 
whether it be pleasure, or field-sports, or bodily 
exercises, or business, or popular agitation, — who 



THE DANGERS OF PURITANISM. 203 

take up with one of these exclusively, and neglect 
Mr. Smith's nobler master-concern, because of the 
mechanical form which Hebraism has given to this 
noble master-concern. Hebraism makes it stand, as 
5 we have said, as something talismanic, isolated, and 
all-sufficient, justifying our giving our ordinary selves 
free play in bodily exercises, or business, or popular 
agitation, if we have made our accounts square with 
this master-concern ; and, if we have not, rendering 

10 other things indifferent, and our ordinary self all we 
have to follow, and to follow with all the energy that 
is in us, till we do. Whereas the idea of perfection 
at all points, the encouraging in ourselves spontaneity 
of consciousness, and letting a free play of thought 

15 live and flow around all our activity, the indisposition 
to allow one side of our activity to stand as so all- 
important and all-sufficing that it makes other sides 
indifferent, — this bent of mind in us may not only 
check us in following unreservedly a mean master- 

20 concern of any kind, but may even, also, bring new 
life and movement into that side of us with which 
alone Hebraism concerns itself, and awaken a healthier 
and less mechanical activity there. Hellenism may 
thus actually serve to further the designs of Hebra- 

25 ism. — Culture and Anarchy^ ed. 1896, pp. 134-145. 



XLbc IRot ©tuBelvea, 

The Old Testament, nobody will ever deny, is filled 
with the word and thought of righteousness. " In 
the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway 
thereof is no death ; " " Righteousness tendeth to 
life ; " *' He that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own 5 
death ; " " The way of transgressors is hard ; " — 
nobody will deny that those texts may stand for the 
fundamental and ever-recurring idea of the Old Testa- 
ment/ No people ever felt so strongly as the people 
of the Old Testament, the Hebrew people, that con- lo 
duct is three-fourths of our life and its largest con- 
cern. No people ever felt so strongly that succeeding, 
going right, hitting the mark in this great concern, 
was //le 7vay of peace ^ the highest possible satisfaction. 
'' He that keepeth the law, happy is he ; its ways are 15 
ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace ; if 
thou hadst walked in its ways, thou shouldst have 
dwelt in peace for ever ! " ^ Jeshurun, one of the 
ideal names of their race, is the upright j Israel, the 
other and greater, is the wrestler with God, he who has 20 
known the contention and strain it costs to stand 
upright. That mysterious personage by whom their 
history first touches the hill of Sion, is Melchisedek, 
the righteous king. Their holy city, Jerusalem, is the 

' Prov. xii. 28 ; xi. ig ; xiii. 15. 

^ Prov. xxix. 18 ; iii. 17. Banich iii. 13. 



THE NOT OURSELVES. 205 

foundation, or vision, or inheritance, of that which 
righteousness achieves,— /^^r^. The law of righteous- 
ness was such an object of attention to them, that its 
words were to " be in their heart, and thou shalt teach 
5 them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of 
them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou 
walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and 
when thou risest up." ^ That they might keep them 
ever in mind, they wore them, went about with them, 

10 made talismans of them. ''Bind them upon thy 
fingers, bind them about thy neck ; write them upon 
the table of thine heart ! " '^ " Take fast hold of her," 
they said of the doctrine of conduct, or righteousness, 
" let her not go ! keep her, for she is thy life ! " ^ 

15 People who thus spoke of righteousness could not 
but have had their minds long and deeply engaged 
with it ; much more than the generality of mankind, 
who have nevertheless, as we saw, got as far as the 
notion of morals or conduct. And, if they were so 

20 deeply attentive to it, one thing could not fail to 
strike them. It is this : the very great part in 
righteousness which belongs, we may say, to not our- 
selves. In the first place, we did not make ourselves 
and our nature, or conduct as the object of three- 

25 fourths of that nature ; we did not provide that happi- 
ness should follow conduct, as it undeniably does ; 
that the sense of succeeding, going right, hitting the 
mark, in conduct, should give satisfaction, and a very 
high satisfaction, just as really as the sense of doing 

30 well in his work gives pleasure to a poet or painter, or 

"^ De liter ono7ny vi. 6, 7. '^ Prov. vii, 3 ; iii. 3. 

^Prov. iv. 13. 



2c6 THE NOT OURSELVES. 

accomplishing what he tries gives pleasure to a man 
who is learning to ride or to shoot ; or as satisfying 
his hunger, also, gives pleasure to a man who is 
hungry. 

All this we did not make ; and, in the next place, 5 
our dealing with it at all, when it is made, is not 
wholly, or even nearly wholly, in our own power. Our 
conduct is capable, irrespective of what we can our- 
selves certainly answer for, of almost infinitely differ- 
ent degrees of force and energy in the performance of lo 
it, of lucidity and vividness in the perception of it, of 
fulness in the satisfaction from it ; and these degrees 
may vary from day to day, and quite incalculably. 
Facilities and felicities, — whence do they come ? 
suggestions and stimulations, — where do they tend? 15 
hardly a day passes but we have some experience of 
them. And so Henry More was led to say, that 
"there was something about us that knew better, 
often, what we would be at than we ourselves." For 
instance : every one can understand how health and 20 
freedom from pain may give energy for conduct, and 
how a neuralgia, suppose, may diminish it. It does 
not depend on ourselves, indeed, whether we have the 
neuralgia or not, but we can understand its impairing 
our spirit. But the strange thing is, that with the same 25 
neuralgia we may find ourselves one day without 
spirit and energy for conduct, and another day with 
them. So that we may most truly say : " Left to 
ourselves, we sink and perish ; visited, we lift up our 
heads and live." ^ And we may well give ourselves, in 30 

® " Relicti mergimur et perimus, visitati vero erigimur et 

vivimus." 



THE NOT OURSELVES. 207 

grateful and devout self-surrender, to that by which we 
are thus visited. So much is there incalculable, so 
much that belongs to not ourselves^ in conduct ; and 
the more we attend to conduct, and the more we value 
5 it, the more we shall feel this. 

The not ourselves^ which is in us and in the world 
around us, has almost everywhere, as far as we can 
see, struck the minds of men as they awoke to con- 
sciousness, and has inspired them with awe. Every 

10 one knows how the mighty natural objects which most 
took their regards became the objects to which this 
awe addressed itself. Our very word God is a remi- 
niscence of these times, when men invoked " The 
Brilliant on high," sublime hoc catidens quod iiwocant 

IS omnes /ovem^ as the power representing to them that 
which transcended the limits of their narrow selves, 
and that by which they lived and moved and had their 
being. Every one knows of what differences of opera- 
tion men's dealing with this power has in different 

20 places and times shown itself capable ; how here they 
have been moved by the 7iot ourselves to a cruel terror, 
there to a timid religiosity, there again to a play of 
imagination ; almost always, however, connecting 
with it, by some string or other, conduct. 

25 But we are not writing a history of religion ; we are 
only tracing its effect on the language of the men from 
whom we get the Bible. At the time they produced 
those documents which give to the Old Testament its 
power and its true character, the not ourselves which 

30 weighed upon the mind of Israel, and engaged its awe, 
was the not ourselves by which we get the sense for 
righteousness, and whence we find the help to do right. 



2o8 THE NOT OURSELVES. 

This conception was indubitably what lay at the bot- 
tom of that remarkable change which under Moses, at 
a certain stage of their religious history, befell the 
Hebrew people's mode of naming God/ This was 
what they intended in that name, which we wrongly 5 
convey, either without translation, by Jehovah, which 
gives us the notion of a mere mythological deity, or 
by a wrong translation, Lord, which gives us the 
notion of a magnified and non-natural man. The 
name they used was : The Eternal. lo 

Philosophers dispute whether moral ideas, as they 
call them, the simplest ideas of conduct and righteous- 
ness which now seem instinctive, did not all grow, 
were not once inchoate, embryo, dubious, unformed,® 
That may have been so ; the question is an interesting 15 
one for science. But the interesting question for con- 
duct is whether those ideas are unformed or formed 
now. They are formed now ; and they were formed 
when the Hebrews named the power, out of them- 
selves, which pressed upon their spirit : The Eternal. 20 
Probably the life of Abraham, the friend of God, how- 
ever imperfectly the Bible traditions by themselves 
convey it to us, was a decisive step forwards in the 
development of these ideas of righteousness. Proba- 
bly this was the moment when such ideas became 25 
fixed and ruling for the Hebrew people, and marked it 
permanently off from all others who had not made the 
same step. But long before the first beginnings of 
recorded history, long before the oldest word of Bible 

' See Exodus iii. 14. 

^ " Qu'est-ce-que la nature ? " says Pascal : ''petit etre une pre- 
miere coiUiimc, comme la coutume est une seconde nature." 






THE NOT OURSELVES. 209 

literature, these ideas must have been at work. We 
know it by the result, although they may have for a 
long while been but rudimentary. In Israel's earliest 
history and earliest literature, under the name of 
5 Eloah, Elohim, The Mighty, there may have lain and 
matured, there did lie and mature, ideas of God more 
as a moral power, more as a power connected, above 
everything, with conduct and righteousness, than were 
entertained by other races. Not only can we judge 

10 by the result that this must have been so, but we can 
see that it was so. Still their name, The Mighty, does 
not in itself involve any true and deep religious ideas, 
any more than our name, The Shining. With The 
Eternal it is otherwise. For what did they mean by 

15 the Eternal ; the Eternal what? The Eternal cause? 
Alas, these poor people were not Archbishops of York. 
They meant the Eternal righteous, who loveth right- 
eousness. They had dwelt upon the thought of 
conduct and right and wrong, till the not ourselves 

20 which is in us and all around us, became to them 
adorable eminently and altogether as a power which 
makes for righteousness ; which makes for it unchange- 
ably and eternally, and is therefore called The 
Eternal. 

25 There is not a particle of metaphysics in their use 
of this name, any more than in their conception of the 
not ourselves to which they attached it. Both came to 
them not from abstruse reasoning but from experience, 
and from experience in the plain region of conduct. 

30 Theologians with metaphysical heads render Israel's 
Eternal by the self -existent, and Israel's not ourselves 
by the absolute, and attribute to Israel their own sub- 



2IO THE NOT OURSELVES. 

tleties. According to them, Israel had his head full of 
the necessity of a first cause, and therefore said, The 
Eternal; as, again, they imagine him looking out into 
the world, noting everywhere the marks of design and 
adaptation to his wants, and reasoning out and infer- 5 
ring thence the fatherhood of God. All these fancies 
come from an excessive turn for reasoning, and a 
neglect of observing men's actual course of thinking 
and way of using words. Israel, at this stage when 
The Eternal was revealed to him, inferred nothing, lo 
reasoned out nothing ; he felt and experienced. When 
he begins to speculate, in the schools of Rabbinism, 
he quickly shows how much less native talent than the 
Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester he has for this 
perilous business. Happily, when The Eter7ial was 15 
revealed to him, he had not yet begun to speculate. 

Israel personified, indeed, his Eternal, for he was 
strongly moved, he was an orator and poet. Man 
never knows ho7V anthrop07norphic he is, says Goethe, 
and so man tends always to represent everything under 20 
his own figure. In poetry and eloquence, man may 
and must follow this tendency, but in science it often 
leads him astray. Israel, however, did not scientifi- 
cally predicate /(?r^^;/^///); of God ; he would not even 
have had a notion what was meant by it. He called 25 
him the maker of all things, who gives drink to all out 
of his pleasures as out of a river ; but he was led to 
this by no theory of a first cause. The grandeur of 
the spectacle given by the world, the grandeur of the 
sense of its all being not ourselves, being above and 30 
beyond ourselves and immeasurably dwarfing us, a 
man of imagination instinctively personifies as a single, 



THE NOT OURSELVES. 211 

mighty, living and productive power ; as Goethe tells 
us that the words which rose naturally to his lips, when 
he stood on the top of the Brocken, were : " Lord, 
what is man, that thou mindest him, or the son of man, 
5 that thou makest account of him ? " ' But Israel's * 
confessing and extolling of this power came not even 
from his imaginative feeling, but came first from his 
gratitude for righteousness. To one who knows what 
conduct is, it is a joy to be alive ; and the not our selves y 

10 which by bringing forth for us righteousness makes 
our happiness, working just in the same sense, brings 
forth this glorious world to be righteous in. That is 
the notion at the bottom of a Hebrew's praise of a 
Creator ; and if we attend, we can see this quite 

15 clearly. Wisdom and understanding mean, for Israel, 
the love of order, of righteousness. Righteousness, 
order, conduct, is for Israel at once the source of all 
man's happiness, and at the same time the very essence 
of The Eternal. The great work of the Eternal is the 

20 foundation of this order in man, the implanting in 
mankind of his own love of righteousness, his own 
spirit, his own wisdom and understanding ; and it is 
only as a farther and natural working of this energy 
that Israel conceives the establishment of order in the 

25 world, or creation. " To depart from evil, that is un- 
derstanding ! Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, 
and the man that getteth understanding. The Eteriial 
by wisdom hath founded the earthy by understanding hath 
he established the heavens "y ^^ and so the Bible-writer 

30 passes into the account of creation. It all comes to 
him from the idea of righteousness. 

'^ Psalm cxliv, 3. '^ Prov. iii. 13-20. 



2 12 THE NOT OURSELVES. 

And it is the same with all the language our 
Hebrew religionist uses. God is a father, because the 
power in and around us, which makes for righteous- 
ness, is indeed best described by the name of this 
authoritative but yet tender and protecting relation. 5 
So, too, with the intense fear and abhorrence of 
idolatry. Conduct, righteousness, is, above all, a 
matter of inward motion and rule. No sensible forms 
can represent it, or help us to it ; such attempts at 
representation can only distract us from it. So, too, 10 
with the sense of the oneness of God. '' Hear, O 
Israel ! The Lord our God is one Lord." ^' People 
think that in this unity of God, — this monotheistic 
idea, as they call it, — they have certainly got meta- 
physics at last. They have got nothing of the kind. 15 
The monotheistic idea of Israel is simply seriousness. 
There are, indeed, many aspects of the 7wt ourselves; 
but Israel regarded one aspect of it only, that by 
which it makes for righteousness. He had the advan- 
tage, to be sure, that with this aspect three-fourths of 20 
human life is concerned. But there are other aspects 
which may be set in view. " Frail and striving 
mortality," says the elder Pliny in a noble passage, 
"mindful of its own weakness, has distinguished these 
aspects severally, so as for each man to be able to 25 
attach himself to the divine by this or that part, 
according as he has most need." '^ That is an apology 
for polytheism, as answering to man's many-sidedness. 

^^ Deut. vi, 4. 

^'^ " Fragilis et laboriosa mortalitas in partes ista digessit, infir- 
niitatis suae memor, ut portionibus coleret quisque, quo maxime 
indigeret." — Nat. Hist. ii. 5. 



THE NOT OURSELVES. 213 

But Israel felt that being thus many-sided degenerated 
into an imaginative play, and bewildered what Israel 
recognized as our sole religious consciousness, — the 
consciousness of right. " Let thine eyelids look right 
5 on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee ; 
turn not to the right hand nor to the left : remove thy 
foot from evil ! " ^^ 

For does not Ovid say,'* in excuse for the immorality 
of his verses, that the sight and mention of the gods 

10 themselves, — the rulers of human life, — often raised 
immoral thoughts ? And so the sight and mention of 
all aspects of the not ourselves must. Yet how tempt- 
ing are many of these aspects ! Even at this time of 
day, the grave authorities of the University of Cam- 

15 bridge are so struck by one of them, that of pleasure, 
life, and fecundity, — of the hominujft divo?nque voluptas, 
alma Venus ^ — that they set it publicly up as an object 
for their scholars to fix their minds upon, and to 
compose verses in honour of. That is all very well 

20 at present ; but with this natural bent in the authori- 
ties of the University of Cambridge, and in the Indo- 
European race to which they belong, where would 
they be now if it had not been for Israel, and for the 
stern check which Israel put upon the glorification 

25 and divinisation of this natural bent of mankind, this 
attractive aspect of the not ourselves ? Perhaps going in 
procession, Vice-Chancellor, bedels, masters, scholars, 

^^ Prov. iv, 25, 27. 
1* Tristia ii. 287 :— 

"Quis locus est templis augustior? haec quoque vitet 
In culpam si qua est ingeniosa suam." 
See the whole passage. 



214 THE NOT OURSELVES. 

and all, in spite of their Professor of Moral Philosophy, 
to the Temple of Aphrodite ! Nay, and very likely 
Mr. Birks himself, his brows crowned with myrtle 
and scarcely a shade of melancholy on his countenance, 
would have been going along with them ! It is Israel 5 . 
and his seriousness that have saved the authorities of 
the University of Cambridge from carrying their 
divinisation of pleasure to these lengths, or from 
making more of it, indeed, than a mere passing intel- 
lectual play ; and even this play Israel would have 10 
beheld with displeasure, saying : O turn away mine 
eyes lest they behold vanity, but quicken Thou me iti thy 
7uay ! ^^ So earnestly and exclusively were Israel's 
regards bent on one aspect of the not ourselves : its 
aspect as a power of making for conduct, righteous- 15 
ness. Israel's Eternal was the Eternal which says : 
" To depart from evil, that is understanding ! Be ye 
holy, for I am holy ! " Now, as righteousness is but a 
heightened conduct, so holiness is but a heightened 
righteousness ; a more finished, entire, and awe-filled 20 
righteousness. It was such a righteousness which was 
Israel's ideal ; and therefore it was that Israel said, 
not indeed what our Bibles make him say, but this : 
" Hear, O Israel ! The Eternal is our God, The 
Eternal alone.'* 25 

And in spite of his turn for personification, his want 
of a clear boundary-line between poetry and science, 
his inaptitude to express even abstract notions by 
other than highly concrete terms, — in spite of these 
scientific disadvantages, or rather, perhaps, because of 30 
them, because he had no talent for abstruse reasoning 
^^ Psalm cxix. 37. 



THE NO 7' OURSELVES. 215 

to lead him astray, — the spirit and tongue of Israel 
kept a propriety, a reserve, a sense of the inadequacy 
of language in conveying man's ideas of God, which 
contrast strongly with the licence of affirmation in 
5 our Western theology. " The high and holy One 
that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy,'"'' is far 
more proper and felicitous language than '' the moral 
and intelligent Governor of the uiiiverse," just because 
it far less attempts to be precise, but keeps to the 

10 language of poetry and does not essay the language of 
science. As he had developed his idea of God from 
personal experience, Israel knew what we, who have 
developed our idea from his words about it, so often 
are ignorant of : that his words were but thrown 

1^ out 2.1 z. vast object of consciousness, which he could 
not fully grasp, and which he apprehended clearly by 
one point alone, — that it made for the great concern 
of life conduct. How little we know of it besides, how 
impenetrable is the course of its ways with us, how we 

20 are baffled in our attempts to name and describe it, 
how, when we personify it and call it " the moral and 
intelligent Governor of the universe," we presently 
find it not to be a person as man conceives of person, 
nor moral as man conceives of moral, nor intelligent 

25 as man conceives of intelligent, nor a governor as man 
conceives of governors, — all this, which scientific 
theology loses sight of, Israel, who had but poetry and 
eloquence, and no system, and who did not mind 
contradicting himself, knew. *' Is it any pleasure to 

30 the Almighty, that thou art righteous?"" What a 
blow to our ideal of that magnified and non-natural 

""^ Isaiah W\\. 15. ^'^ Job y.yX\. 3. 



2i6 THE NOT OURSELVES. 

man, " the moral and intelligent Governor ! " Say 
what we can about God, say our best, we have yet, 
Israel knew, to add instantly : *' Lo, these zxt parts of 
his ways ; but how Utile a portion is heard of him / " '® 
Yes, indeed, Israel remembered that far better than 5 
our bishops do. "Canst thou by searching find out 
God ; canst thou find out the perfection of the 
Almighty ? It is more high than heaven, what canst 
thou do ? deeper than hell, what canst thou know ? "^^ 

Will it be said, experience might also have shown 10 
to Israel a not ourselves which did not make for his 
happiness, but rather made against it, bafHed his 
claims to it ? But no man, as we have elsewhere 
remarked,^" who simply follows his own consciousness, 
is aware of any claims, any rights, whatever ; what he 15 
gets of good makes him thankful, what he gets of ill 
seems to him natural. His simple spontaneous feeling 
is well expressed by that saying of Izaak Walton : 
" Every misery that I miss is a new mercy, and there- 
fore let us be thankful." It is true, the not ourselves 20 
of which we are thankfully conscious we inevitably 
speak of and speak to as a man ; for "man never 
knows how anthropomorphic he is." And as time 
proceeds, imagination and reasoning keep working 
upon this substructure, and build from it a magnified 25 
and non-natural man. Attention is then drawn, after- 
wards, to causes outside ourselves which seem to make 
for sin and suffering ; and then either these causes 
have to be reconciled by some highly ingenious scheme 
with the magnified and non-natural man's power, or a 30 

^^Job xxvi. 14. ^^Job xi. 7, 8. 

"^^ Culture and Anarchy, p. 165. 



THE NOT OURSELVES. 217 

second magnified and non-natural man has to be sup- 
posed, who pulls the contrary way to the first. So 
arise Satan and his angels. But all this is secondary, 
and comes much later. Israel, the founder of our 
5 religion, did not begin with this. He began with 
experience. He knew from thankful experience the 
not ourselves which makes for righteousness, and knew 
how little we know about God besides. — Literature and 
Dogma, ed. 1895, PP- '^Z'l^- 



IParie anD tbe Senses. 

And if Assyria and Babylon seem too remote, let 
us look nearer home for testimonies to the inexhaust- 
ible grandeur and significance of the Old Testament 
revelation, according to that construction which we 
here put upon it. Every educated man loves Greece, 5 
owes gratitude to Greece. Greece was the lifter-up 
to the nations of the banner of art and science, as 
Israel was the lifter-up of the banner of righteousness. 
Now, the world cannot do without art and science. 
And the lifter-up of the banner of art and science lo 
was naturally much occupied with them, and conduct 
was a homely plain matter. Not enough heed, there- 
fore, was given by him to conduct. But conduct, 
plain matter as it is, is six-eighths of life, while art 
and science are only two-eighths. And this brilliant 15 
Greece perished for lack of attention enough to 
conduct; for want of conduct, steadiness, character. 
And there is this difference between Greece and 
Judaea: both were custodians of a revelation, and 
both perished ; but Greece perished of ^z'^r-fidelity to2o 
her revelation, and Judaea perished of e^w^^r-fidelity to 
hers. Nay, and the victorious revelation now, even 
now, — in this age when more of beauty and more of 
knowledge are so much needed, and knowledge, at 
any rate, is so highly esteemed, — the revelation which 25 
rules the world even now, is not Greece's revelation, 

2l3 



PARIS AND THE SENSES. 219 

but Judaea's ; not the pre-eminence of art and science, 
but the pre-eminence of righteousness. 

It reminds one of what is recorded of Abraham, 
before the true inheritor of the promises, the humble 
5 and homely Isaac, was born. Abraham looked upon 
the vigorous, bold, brilliant young Ishmael, and said 
appealingly to God: '* Oh that Ishmael m\^\. live 
before thee ! " * But it cannot be : the promises are 
to conduct^ conduct only. And so, again, we in like 

10 manner behold, long after Greece has perished, a 
brilliant successor of Greece, the Renascence, present 
herself with high hopes. The preachers of righteous- 
ness, blunderers as they often were, had for centuries 
had it all their own way. Art and science had been 

15 forgotten, men's minds had been enslaved, their bodies 
macerated. But the gloomy, oppressive dream is now 
over. " Let us return to Nature ! " And all the world 
salutes with pride and joy the Renascence, and prays 
to Heaven: "Oh that Ishjuael xm<^\\. live before thee ! " 

20 Surely the future belongs to this brilliant new-comer, 
with his animating maxim : Let us return to Nature ! 
Ah, what pitfalls are in that word Nature I Let us 
return to art and science, which are a part of Nature ; 
yes. Let us return to a proper conception of right- 

25eousness, to a true use of the method and secret 
of Jesus, which have been all denaturalized; yes. . 
But, *' Let us return to Nature; " — do you mean 
that we are to give full swing to our inclinations, to 
throw the reins on the neck of our senses, of those 

30 sirens whom Paul the Israelite called " the deceitful 
lusts," ^ and of following whom he said " Let no man 
^ Genesis xvii. i8. 2 £pjj jy_ 22. 



2 20 PARIS AND THE SENSES. 

beguile you with vain words, for because of these 
things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of 
disobedience ! " ^ Do you mean that conduct is not 
three-fourths of life, and that the secret of Jesus has 
no use ! And the Renascence did mean this, or half- 5 
meant this ; so disgusted was it with the cowled and 
tonsured Middle Age. And it died of it, this brilliant 
Ishmael died of it ! it died of provoking a collision 
with the homely Isaac, righteousness. On the Conti- 
nent came the Catholic reaction ; in England, as we 10 
have said elsewhere, " the great middle class, the 
kernel of the nation, entered the prison of Puritanism, 
and had the key turned upon its spirit there for 
two hundred years." After too much glorification 
of art, science, and culture, too little ; after Rabelais, 15 
George Fox. 

France, again, how often and how impetuously for 
France has the prayer gone up to Heaven : ** Oh that 
Ishinael might live before thee ! " It is not enough 
perceived what it is which gives to France her attrac- 20 
tiveness for everybody, and her success, and her 
repeated disasters. France is Vhomme sensuel moyen, 
the average sensual man ; Paris is the city of rho7nme 
sensuel moyen. This has an attraction for all of us. 
We all have in us this homme sensuel, the man of the 25 
"wishes of the flesh and of the current thoughts"; 1 
but we develop him under checks and doubts, and I 
unsystematically and often grossly. France, on the 
other hand, devolops him confidently and harmoni- 
ously. She makes the most of him, because she 30 
knows what she is about and keeps in a mean, as her 
^ Eph. V. 6. 



PARIS AND THE SENSES. 221 

climate is in a mean, and her situation. She does not 
develop him with madness, into a monstrosity, as the 
Italy of the Renascence did; she develops him equably 
and systematically. And hence she does not shock 
5 people with him but attracts them, she names herself 
the France of tact and measure, good sense, logic. In 
a way, this is true. As she develops the senses, the 
apparent self, all round, in good faith, without misgiv- 
ings, without violence, she has much reasonableness 

10 and clearness in all her notions and arrangements ; a 
sort of balance even in conduct ; as much art and 
science, and it is not a little, as goes with the ideal of 
rho77ime sensiiel moyen. And from her ideal of the 
average sensual man France has deduced her famous 

15 gospel of the Rights of Man, which she preaches with 
such an infinite crowing and self-admiration. France 
takes " the wishes of the flesh and of the current 
thoughts" for a man's rights; and human happiness, 
and the perfection of society, she places in everybody's 

20 being enabled to gratify these wishes, to get these 
rights, as equally as possible and as much as possible. 
In Italy, as in ancient Greece, the satisfying develop- 
ment of this ideal of the average sensual man is broken 
by the imperious ideal of art and science disparaging 

25 it ; in the Germanic nations, by the ideal of morality 
disparaging it. Still, whenever, as often happens, the 
pursuers of these higher ideals are a little weary of 
them or unsuccessful with them, they turn with a sort 
of envy and admiration to the ideal set up by France, 

30 — so positive, intelligible, and up to a certain point 
satisfying. They are inclined to try it instead of 
their own, although they can never bring themselves 



2 22 PARIS AND THE SENSES. 

to try it thoroughly, and therefore well. But this 
explains the great attraction France exercises upon 
the world. All of us feel, at some time or other in 
our lives, a hankering after the French ideal, a dis- 
position to try it. More particularly is this true of 5 
the Latin nations ; and therefore everywhere, among 
these nations, you see the old indigenous type of city 
disappearing, and the type of modern Paris, the city 
of Vhojnme sensuel moyen^ replacing it. La Boheme, the 
ideal, free, pleasurable life of Paris, is a kind of lo 
Paradise of Ishmaels. And all this assent from every 
quarter, and the clearness and apparent reasonable- 
ness of their ideal besides, fill the French with a kind 
of ecstatic faith in it, a zeal almost fanatical for 
propagating what they call French civilisation every- 15 
where, for establishing its predominance, and their 
own predominance along with it, as of the people 
entrusted with an oracle so showy and taking. Oh 
that Ishniael might live before thee ! Since everybody 
has something which conspires with this Ishmael, his 20 
success, again and again, seems to be certain. Again 
and again he seems drawing near to a worldwide suc- 
cess, nay, to have succeeded ; — but always, at this 
point, disaster overtakes him, he signally breaks 
down. At this crowning moment, when all seems 25 
triumphant with him, comes what the Bible calls a 
crisis^ or judgment. Now is the judgment of this 
world! now shall the prince of this world be cast out I * 
Cast out he is, and always must be, because his ideal, 
which is also that of France in general, however she 30 
may have noble spirits who contend against it and 

*John xii. 31. 



PARIS AND THE SENSES. 223 

seek a better, is after all a false one. Plausible and 
attractive as it may be, the constitution of things 
turns out to be somehow or other against it. And 
why ? Because the free development of our senses 
5 all round, of our apparent self, has to undergo a pro- 
found modification from the law of our higher real 
self, the law of righteousness ; because he, whose 
ideal is the free development of the senses all round, 
serves the senses, is a servant. But : The servant 

10 abideth not in the house for ever; the son abideth for 
ever.^ 

Is it possible to imagine a grander testimony to 
the truth of the revelation committed to Israel? 
What miracle of making an iron axe-head float on 

15 water, what successful prediction that a thing should 
happen just so many years and months and days 
hence, could be really half so impressive ? — Literature 
and Dogma, ed. 1896, pp. 319-325. 

* John viii. 35. 



XLbc Celt aiiD the tTeuton. 

Let me repeat what I have often said of the char- 
acteristics which mark the English spirit, the English 
genius. This spirit, this genius, judged, to be sure, 
rather from a friend's than an enemy's point of view, 
yet judged on the whole fairly, is characterised, 1 5 
have repeatedly said, by efiergy with honesty. Take 
away some of the energy which comes to us, as I 
believe, in part from Celtic and Roman sources ; 
insteady of energy, say rather steadiness; and you 
have the Germanic genius : steadiness with honesty. 10 
It is evident how nearly the two characterisations 
approach one another ; and yet they leave, as we 
shall see, a great deal of room for difference. Steadi- 
ness with honesty ; the danger for a national spirit 
thus composed is the humdrum, the plain and ugly, 15 
the ignoble : in a word, das Gemeine^ die Gemeinheit^ 
that curse of Germany, against which Goethe was all 
his life fighting. Th e excellence of a. national spirit 
thus composed is freedom fro m whim, fjightine sy 
perverseness 7 patient fidelity^to Nature. — in p wnrrl^ or> 
seience^TesLding it at last, though slowly, and not by 
"The most brilliant road, out of the bondage of the 
humdrum and common, into the better life. The uni- 
versal dead-level of plainness and homeliness, the 
lack of all beauty and distinction in form and feature, 25 
the slowness and clumsiness of the language, the 



THE CELT AND THE TEUTON. 225 

eternal beer, sausages, and bad tobacco, the blank 
commonness everywhere, pressing at last like a 
weiglit on the spirits of the traveller in Northern 
Germany, and making him impatient to be gone, — 
5 this is the weak side ; the industry, the well-doing, 
the patient steady elaboration of things, the idea of 
science governing all departments of human activity, 
— this is the strong side ; and through this side of 
her genius, Germany has already obtained excellent 

10 results, and is destined, we may depend upon it, how- 
ever her pedantry, her slowness, her fumbling, her 
ineffectiveness, her bad government, may at times 
makes us cry out, to an immense development.^ 

For didness, the creeping Saxons, — says an old Irish 

15 poem, assigning the characteristics for which different 
nations are celebrated : 

For acuteness and valour, the Greeks, 
For excessive pride, the Romans, 
For dulness, the creeping Saxons ; 
20 For beauty and amorousness, the Gaedhils. 

We have seen in what sense, and with what explana- 
tion, this characterisation of the German may be 
allowed to stand ; now let us come to the beautiful 
and amorous Gaedhil. Or rather, let us find a defini- 
25 tion which may suit both branches of the Celtic 
family, the Cymri as well as the Gael. It is clear 
that special circumstances may have developed some 
one side in the national character of Cymri or Gael, 
Welshman or Irishman, so that the observer's notice 

' It is to be remembered that the above was written before 
the recent war between Prussia and Austria. 



226 THE CELT AND THE TEUTON. 

shall be readily caught by this side, and yet it may 
be impossible to adopt it as characteristic of the Celtic 
nature generally. For instance, in his beautiful essay 
on the poetry of the Celtic races, M. Renan, with his 
eyes fixed on the Bretons and the Welsh, is struck 5. 
with the timidity, the shyness, the delicacy of the 
Celtic nature, its preference for a retired life, its 
embarrassment at having to deal with the great world. 
He talks of the douce petite race naturellement chretienne^ 
his race fie re et timide, a Vexterieur gauche et einbar- lo 
rasse'e. But it is evident that this description, however 
well it may do for the Cymri, will never do for the 
Gael, never do for the typical Irishman of Donny- 
brook fair. Again, M. Renan's infinie d^licatesse de 
sentiment qui caracterise la race Celtique, how little 15 
that accords with the popular conception of an Irish- 
man who wants to borrow money ! Sentiment is, how- 
ever, the word which marks where the Celtic races 
really touch and are one ; sentime ntal, ij _^h^ (^f>lfir — 
nature is to be characterised by a single term, is the 20 
best term to take. An org anisation q uick^ to feel 
impressions, and f eeling them v er y strong ly :__a^__ 
lively personality therefore, keenly sensitive to joy 
-^j^ajfrTTfT^nrrn w^nliig~1q"TT>~p~i-n a i n potnlT^Tf the downs 
oflifejo o^much outnumber the u ^s^jhis temperamen t, 2j 
]ust because it is so quickly and nearly conscious of 



~an impressions^ ^ may no doubt be ^ seen ~sTfy'~^n^ 

Vounded j itmay be seen in wi stful regret, it may_ be_ 

seen in passion ate, penetrating melancholy; but its 

^sence J.s__tQ__as pire ardently __ after life ^ light, anj jjo 

emotion, t o be_ex pansive, adventurous, and gay . Our 

"vord gay^ it is jaid^Js_Ji^£lLIIeltic^__It is not froni 



t 



THE CELT AND THE TEUTON. 227 

gaudium, but from the Celtic gair, to laugh; ^ and 
the impressionable Celt, soon up and soon down, is 
the more down because it is so his nature to be up — 
to be sociable, hospitable, eloquent, admired, figuring 
5 away brilliantly. He loves bright colours, he easily 
becomes audacious, overcrowing, full of fanfaronade. 
The German, say the physiologists, has the larger 
volume of intestines (and who that has ever seen a 
German at a table-d'hote will not readily believe this ?), 

10 the Frenchman has the more developed organs of 
respiration. That is just the expansive, eager Celtic 
nature ; the head in the air, snuffing and snorting ; a 
proud look and a high stomachy as the Psalmist says, 

' but without any such settled savage temper as the 

15 Psalmist seems to impute by those words. For good 
and for bad, the Celtic genius is more airy and unsub- 
stantial, goes less near the ground, than the German. 
The Celt is often called sensual ; but it is not so much 
the vulgar satisfactions of sense that attract him as 

20 emotion and excitement ; he is truly, as I began by 
saying, sentimental. 

Sentimental, — always ready to rea ct agaiu.^f. thf 
despotism of fact ; thar"is the description a great 

2 The etymology is Monsieur Henri Martin's, but Lord Strang- 
ford says : — " Whatever gai may be, it is assuredly not Celtic. 
Is there any authority for this word gair, to laugh, or rather 
'laughter,' beyond O'Reilly? O'Reilly is no authority at all 
except in so far as tested and passed by the new school. It is 
hard to give up gavisus. But Diez, chief authority in Romanic 
matters, is content to accept Muratori's reference to an old High- 
German gdhi^ modern jdhe, sharp, quick, sudden, brisk, and so 
to the sense of lively, animated, high in spirits." 



2 28 THE CELT AND THE TEUTON. 

f riend^ of the Celt giv e s of him : and it is not a bad 
description of the sentimental temperament ; it lets 
us into the secret of its dangers and of its habitual 
want of success. Bal ance, measure, and patien ££^ 
rhese_a re the e_te rnalj:onditions, even supposing jthe^5_ 
happiest temperament to start with, of high success ; 
"^d balance, measure, and patience are just what the 
"-Cdrhas neveriraii: — Everrih the world of spiritual 
creation, He~TTirs"never, in spite of his admirable gifts 
of quick perception and warm emotion, succeeded lo 
perfectly, because he never has had steadiness, pa- 
tience, sanity enough to comply with the conditions 
under which alone can expression be perfectly given 
to the finest perceptions and emotions. The Greek 
has the same perceptive, emotional temperament as 15 
the Celt ; but he adds to this temperament the sense 
of tneasure j hence his admirable success in the plastic 
arts, in which the Celtic genius, with its chafing 
against the despotism of fact, its perpetual straining 
after mere emotion, has accomplished nothing. In 20 
the comparatively petty art of ornamentation, in rings, 
brooches, crosiers, relic-cases, and so on, he has done 
just enough to show his delicacy of taste, his happy 
temperament ; but the grand difficulties of painting 
and sculpture, the prolonged dealings of spirit with 25 
matter, he has never had patience for. Take the 
more spiritual arts of music and poetry. All that 
emotion alone can do in music the Celt has done ; the 
very soul of emotion breathes in the Scotch and Irish 
airs ; but with all this power of musical feeling, what 30 

^ Monsieur Henri Martin, whose chapters on the Celts, in his 
Histoire de France, are full of information arid interest, 



THE CELT AND THE TEUTON. 229 

has the Celt, so eager for emotion that he has not 
patience for science, effected in music, to be compared 
with what the less emotional German, steadily develop- 
ing his musical feeling with the science of a Sebastian 
5 Bach or a Beethoven, has effected ? In poetry, again, 
— poetry which the Celt has so passionately, so nobly 
loved ; poetry where emotion counts for so much, but 
where reason, too, reason, measure, sanity, also count for 
so much, — the Celt has shown genius, indeed, splendid 

10 genius; but even here his faults have clung to him, 
and hindered him from producing great works, such 
as other nations with a genius for poetry, — the Greeks, 
say, or the Italians, — have produced. The Celt has 
not produced great poetical works, he has only pro- 

15 duced poetry with an air of greatness investing it all, 
and sometimes giving, moreover, to short pieces, or to 
passages, lines, and snatches of long pieces, singular 
beauty and power. And yet he loved poetry so much 
that he grudged no pains to it ; but the true art, the 

20 architectonice which shapes great works, such as the 
Agamemfion or the Divine Comedy, comes only after a 
steady, deep-searching survey, a firm conception of 
the facts of human life, which the Celt has not pa- 
tience for. So he runs off into technic, where he 

25 employs the utmost elaboration, and attains astonish- 
ing skill ; but in the contents of his poetry you have 
only so much interpretation of the world as the first 
dash of a quick, strong perception, and then sentiment, 
infinite sentiment, can bring you. Here, too, his want 

30 of sanity and steadfastness has kept the Celt back 
from the highest success. 

If bis rebellion against fact has thus lamed the Celt 



230 THE CELT AND THE TEUTON. 

even in spiritual work, how much more must it have 
lamed him in the world of business and politics ! 
The skilful and resolute appliance of means to ends 
which is needed both to make progress in material 
civilisation, and also to form powerful states, is just 5 
what the Celt has least turn for. He is sensual, as I 
have said, or at least sensuous ; loves bright colours, 
company, and pleasure ; and here he is like the Greek 
and Latin races ; but_£fim£M^e_ihe_takiii--ihe--Greek 
^_ and-L atin ( Q r- I:.Minised) races have sho wn for gratify- 10 
ing their senses, for procurin g an out ward life, rich, 
luxurious, splendid, with the^Celt'-S- failure-LQ_xeacli 
"liny material civilisation sound and satisfying, and^ 
not out at eTbowsTpooTj^ slgvrnly^^^ajid^haU^ u s . 

•^T he^ se'nsuousne s s of the Greek. __mMe_Sy-baris and 15 
Corinth, the sensuousne ss of the Latin made Ro me 
and Bai?e, the sensuousness of the Latinised French- 
man makes Paris ; the sensuousness of the Celt 
proper has made Ireland. Even in his ideal heroic 
times, his gay and sensuous nature cannot carry him, 20 
in the appliances of his favourite life of sociability 
and pleasure, beyond the gross and creeping Saxon 
whom he despises ; the regent Breas, we are told in 
the Battle of Moytiira of the Foromiatis, became un- 
popular because *' the knives of his people were not 25 
greased at his table, nor did their breath smell of ale 
at the banquet." In its grossness and barbarousness 
is not that Saxon, as Saxon as it can be ? just what 
the Latinised Norman, sensuous and sociable like the 
Celt, but with the talent to make this bent of his 30 
serve to a practical embellishment of his mode of 
living, found so disgusting in the Saxon. 



THE CELT AND THE TEUTON. 231 

And as in material civilisation he has been inef- 
fectual, so has the Celt been ineffectual in politics. 
This colossal, impetuous, adventurous wanderer, the 
Titan of the early world, who in primitive times fills 

5 so large a place on earth's scene, dwindles and dwindles 
as history goes on, and at last is shrunk to what we 
now see him. For ages and ages the world has been 
constantly slipping, ever more and more, out of the 
Celt's grasp. "They went forth to the war," Ossian 

10 says most truly, " but they always fell.'' 

And yet, if one sets about constituting an ideal 
genius, what a great deal of the Celt does one find 
oneself drawn to put into it ! Of an ideal genius 
one does not want the elements, any of them, to be 

15 in a state of weakness; on the contrary, one wants 
all of them to be in the highest state of power ; but 
with a law of measure, of harmony, presiding over 
the whole. So the sensibility of the Celt, if every- 
thing else were not sacrificed to it, is a beautiful and 

20 admirable force. For sensibilit y, the poAver of quirk 
and strong per ception and emo tion, is one of the 
very prime constitu ^nts._QfL^pnnis, perliap s its most^ 
positive constituent ; it is to jhe soul what good 
sens'es~are to the body7'tEe'"grand natural condition 

25 of successful activity. Sensibility gives genius its 
materials ; on e^ cannot have too much of it, if one can 
but keep i ts master and not be its slave . Do not let 
us wishthat _the Celt had had less sensibilitYJ mL 
that he had b gen more maste r of it. Even^ as it is, 

30 if his sensibility has been a source of weakness to 
him, it has been a source of power too, and a source 
of happiness. Some people have found in the Celtic 



232 THE CELT AND THE TEUTON, 

nature and its sensib ility the main root out of which 
chivalry and romance and the glorification of a fenii^ I 
"nTne ideal spring ; this is a great question, with^ ! 
"which I cannot deal here. Let me notice in passing, 
however, that there is, in truth, a Celtic air about the 5 
extravagance of chivalry, its reaction against the 
despotism of fact, its straining human nature further 
than it will stand. But putting all this question of 
chivalry and its origin on one side, no doubt the 
sensibility of the Celtic nature, its nervous exaltation, 10 
have something feminine in them, and the Celt is 
thus peculiarly disposed to feel the spell of the femi- 
nine idiosyncrasy ; he has an afhnity to it ; he is not 

far from its secret. Againy-his sensib-LLity__giv£S_ him 

a peculia rly nea r and intimate feeling of nature and 15 
the life of nature ; here, too, he seems in a special 
way attracted by the secret before him, the secret of 
natural beauty and natural magic, and to be close to 
it, to half-divine it. In the productions of the Celtic 
genius, nothing, perhaps, is so interesting as the evi- 20 
dences of this power : I shall have occasion to give 
specimens of them by and by. The same sensibility 
made the Celts full of reverence and enthusiasm for 
genius, learning, and the things of the mind \ to be a 
bard, freed cCman, — that is a characteristic stroke of 25 
this generous and ennobling ardour of theirs, which 
no race has ever shown more strongly. Even the 
extravagance and exaggeration of the sentimental 
Celtic nature has often something romantic and attrac- 
tive about it, something which has a sort of smack of 30 
misdirected good. The Celt, undisciplinable, anarchi- 
cal, and turbulent by nature, but out of affection 



THE CELT AND THE TEUTON. 233 

and admiration giving himself body and soul to some 
leader, that is not a promising political temperament, 
it is just the opposite of the Anglo-Saxon tempera- 
ment, disciplinable and steadily obedient within cer- 
5 tain limits, but retaining an inalienable part of freedom 
and self-dependence ; but it is a temperament for 
which one has a kind of sympathy notwithstanding. 
And very often, for the gay defiant reaction against" 
fact of the lively Celtic nature one has more tha n 

10 sympathy ; one feels, in spite of the extravagance, in 

-—spite of good sense disapproving, magneUsed^n^ex- 
hilarated by it. The Gauls had a rule inflicting a 
fine on every warrior who, when he appeared on 
parade, was found to stick out too much in front, — to 

15 be corpulent, in short. Such a rule is surely the 
maddest article of war ever framed, and to people to 
whom nature has assigned a large volume of intes- 
tines, must appear, no doubt, horrible ; but yet has it 
not an audacious, sparkling, immaterial manner with 

20 it, which lifts one out of routine, and sets one's spirits 
in a glow ? 

All tendencies of human nature are in themselves 
vital and profitable ; when_ they are blamed, they ar e 
only to be blamed rel atively, not absolut el3\ This 

SjTTblds true of the Saxon's phlegm as well as of the 
Celt's sentiment. Out of the steady humdrum habit 
of the creeping Saxon, as the Celt calls him, — out of 
his way of going near the ground, — has come, no 
doubt, Philistinism, that plant of essentially Germanic 

30 growth, flourishing with its genuine marks only in the 
German fatherland. Great Britain and her colonies, 
and the United States of America : but what a soul 



234 THE CELT AND THE TEUTON. 

of goodness there is in Philistinism itself ! and this 
soul of goodness 1, who am often supposed to be 
_Ebil4stoismVTilonar'eneTrf^^^ 

"wishrTFlo^have thi ngs al l its own way, cherish as 
""much aslinybody. This steady-going habit leads at 5 
last, as I have said, up^J o scienceTj iprto the compre-' 
'iTensTorTand'Tnterpretation of the world. With us in 
' Great BrilaTnTit is true, it does not seem to lead so 
far as that ; it is in Germany, where the habit is 
more unmixed, that it can lead to science. Here with 10 
us it seems at a certain point to meet with a conflict- 
ing force, which checks it and prevents its pushing on 
to science ; but before reaching this point what con- 
quests has it not won ! and all the more, perhaps, for 
stopping short at this point, for spending its exertions 15 
within a bounded field, the field of plain sense, of 
direct practical utility. How it has augmented the 
comforts and conveniences of life for us ! Doors that 
open, windows that shut, locks that turn, razors that 
shave, coats that wear, watches tliat go, and a thou- 20 
sand more such good things, are the invention of the 
Philistines. — On the Study of Celtic Literature^ ed 
1S95. PP- 73-S4- 



Xlbc /IftoDern JEiiQlisbman. 

We, on the other hand, do not necessarily gain by 
the commixture of elements in us ; we have seen how 
the clashing of natures in us hampers and embarrasses 
our behaviour ; we might very likely be more at- 
5 tractive, we might very likely be more successful, 
if we were all of a piece. Our want of sureness of 
taste, our eccentricity, come in great measure, no 
doubt, from our not being all of a piece, from our 
having no fixed, fatal, spiritual centre of gravity. 

lo The Rue de Rivoli is one thing, and Nuremberg is 
another, and Stonehenge is another ; but we have a 
turn for all three, and lump them all up together. 
Mr. Tom Taylor's translations from Breton poetry 
offer a good example of this mixing ; he has a genuine 

15 feeling for these Celtic matters, and often, as in the 
£z't7 Tribute of Nomenoe\ or in Lord Nann and the 
Faiij^ he is, both in movement and expression, true 
and appropriate ; but he has a sort of Teutonism and 
Latinism in him too, and so he cannot forbear mixing 

20 with his Celtic strain such disparates as : — 

" 'Twas mirk, mirk night, and the water bright 
Troubled and drumlie flowed " — 

which is evidently Lowland- Scotchy ; or as : — 

" Foregad, but thou'rt an artful hand ! " 

25 which is English- stagey ; or as : — 



236 THE MODERN ENGLISHMAN. 

" To Gradlon's daughter, bright of blee, 
Her lover he whispered tenderly — 
Bethink thee., stveet Da hut ! the key ! " 

which is Anacreontic in the manner of Tom Moore. 
Yes, it is not a sheer advantage to have several strings 5 
to one's bow ! if we had been all German, we might 
have had the science of Germany ; if we had been all 
Cehic, we might have been popular and agreeable ; if 
we had been all Latinised, we miglit have governed 
Ireland as the French govern Alsace, without getting 10 
ourselves detested. Bat now we have Germanism 
enough to make us Philistines, and Normanism 
enough to make us imperious, and Celtism enough 
to make us self-conscious and awkward ; but German 
fideUty to Nature, and Latin precision and clear rea- 15 
son, and Celtic quick-wittedness and spirituality, we 
fall short of. Nay, perhaps, if we are doomed to 
perish (Heaven avert the omen ! ), we shall perish by 
our Celtism, by our self-will and want of patience 
with ideas, our inability to see the way the world is 20 
going ; and yet those very Celts, by our affinity with 
whom we are perishing, will be hating and upbraiding 
us all the time. 

This is a somewhat unpleasant view to take of the 
matter ; but if it is true, its being unpleasant does not 25 
make it any less true, and we are always the better 
for seeing the truth. What we here see is not the 
whole truth, however. So long as this mixed consti- 
tution of our nature possesses us, we pay it tribute 
and serve it ; so soon as we possess it, it pays us 30 
tribute and serves us. So long as we are blindly and 
ignorantly rolled about by the forces of our nature. 



THE MODERN ENGLISHMAN. 237 

their contradiction baffles us and lames us ; so soon 
as we have clearly discerned what they are, and begun 
to apply to them a law of measure, control, and guid- 
ance, they may be made to work for our good and to 
5 carry us forward. Then we may have the good of 
our German part, the good of our Latin part, the 
good of our Celtic part ; and instead of one part 
clashing with the other, we may bring it in to continue 
and perfect the other, when the other has given us 

10 all the good it can yield, and by being pressed further, 
could only give us its faulty excess. Then we may 
use the German faithfulness to Nature to give us 
science, and to free us from insolence and self-will ; 
we may use the Celtic quickness of perception to give 

15 us delicacy, and to free us from hardness and Philis- 
tinism ; we may use the Latin decisiveness to give us 
strenuous clear method, and to free us from fumbling 
and idling. Already, in their untrained state, these 
elements give signs, in our life and literature, of their 

20 being present in us, and a kind of prophecy of what 
they could do for us if they were properly observed, 
trained, and applied. But this they have not yet 
been ; we ride one force of our nature to death ; we 
will be nothing but Anglo-Saxons in the Old World 

25 or in the New ; and when our race has built Bold 
Street, Liverpool, and pronounced it very good, it 
hurries across the Atlantic, and builds Nashville, and 
Jacksonville, and Milledgeville, and thinks it is fulfill- 
ing the designs of Providence in an incomparable 

30 manner. But true Anglo-Saxons, simply and sincerely 
rooted in the German nature, we are not and cannot 
be ; all we have accomplished by our onesideness is 



238 THE MODERN ENGLISHMAN. 

to blur and confuse the natural basis in ourselves 
altogether, and to become something eccentric, unat- 
tractive, and inharmonious. 

A man of exquisite intelligence and charming 
character, the late Mr. Cobden, used to fancy that a 5 
better acquaintance with the United States was the 
grand panacea for us ; and once in a speech he 
bewailed the inattention of our seats of learning to 
them, and seemed to think that if our ingenuous 
youth at Oxford were taught a little less about the 10 
Ilissus, and a little more about Chicago, we should all 
be the better for it. Chicago has its claims upon us, 
no doubt ; but it is evident that from the point of 
view to which I have been leading, a stimulation of 
our Anglo-Saxonism, such as is intended by Mr. Cob- 15 
den's proposal, does not appear the thing most need- 
ful for us ; seeing our American brothers themselves 
have rather, like us, to try and moderate the flame of 
Anglo-Saxonism, in their own breasts, than to ask us 
to clap the bellows to it in ours. So I am inclined to 20 
beseech Oxford, instead of expiating her over-addic- 
tion to the Ilissus by lectures on Chicago, to give us 
an expounder for a still more remote-looking object 
than the Ilissus, — the Celtic languages and literature. 
And yet why should I call it remote ? if, as I have 25 
been labouring to show, in the spiritual frame of us 
English ourselves, a Celtic fibre, little as we may have 
ever thought of tracing it, lives and works. Aliens in 
speech, in religion, in blood I said Lord Lyndhurst ; the 
philologists have set him right about the speech, the 30 
physiologists about the blood ; and perhaps, taking 
religion in the wide but true sense of our whole 



THE MODERN- ENGLISHMAN. 239 

spiritual activity, those who have followed what I have 
been saying here will think that the Celt is not so 
wholly alien to us in religion. But, at any rate, let 
us consider that of the shrunken and diminished 
5 remains of this great primitive race, all, with one 
insignificant exception, belongs to the English empire ; 
only Brittany is not ours ; we have Ireland ; the 
Scotch Highlands, Wales, the Isle of Man, Cornwall. 
They are a part of ourselves, we are deeply interested 

10 in knowing them, they are deeply interested in being 
known by us ; and yet in the great and rich univer- 
sities of this great and rich country there is no chair 
of Celtic, there is no study or teaching of Celtic mat- 
ters ; those who want them must go abroad for them. 

15 It is neither right nor reasonable that this should be 
so. Ireland has had in the last half century a band 
of Celtic students, — a band with which death, alas ! 
has of late been busy, — from whence Oxford or Cam- 
bridge might have taken an admirable professor of 

20 Celtic ; and with the authority of a university chair, 
a great Celtic scholar, on a subject little known, and 
where all would have readily deferred to him, might 
have by this time doubled our facilities for knowing 
the Celt, by procuring for this country Celtic docu- 

25 ments, which were inaccessible here, and preventing 
the dispersion of others which were accessible. It is 
not much that the English Government does for science 
or literature ; but if Eugene O'Curry, from a chair of 
Celtic at Oxford, had appealed to the Government to 

30 get him copies or the originals of the Celtic treasures 
in the Burgundian Library at Brussels, or in the 
library of St. Isidore's College at Rome, even the 



240 THE MODERN ENGLISHMAN. 

English Government could not well have refused him. 
The invaluable Irish manuscripts in the Stowe Library 
the late Sir Robert Peel proposed, in 1849, ^o t)uy for 
the British Museum ; Lord Macaulay, one of the 
trustees of the Museum, declared, with the confident 5 
shallowness which makes him so admired by public 
speakers and leading-article writers, and so intolerable 
to all searchers for truth, that he saw nothing in the 
whole collection worth purchasing for the Museum, 
except the correspondence of Lord Melville on the 10 
American war. That is to say, this correspondence 
of Lord Melville's was the only thing in the collection 
about which Lord Macaulay himself knew or cared. 
Perhaps an Oxford or Cambridge professor of Celtic 
might have been allowed to make his voice heard, on 15 
a matter of Celtic manuscripts, even against Lord 
Macaulay. The manuscripts were bought by Lord 
Ashburnham, who keeps them shut up, and will let no 
one consult them (at least up to the date when O'Curry 
published his Lecfiu^es he did so) *'for fear an actual 20 
acquaintance with their contents should decrease their 
value as matter of curiosity at some future transfer or 
sale." Who knows? Perhaps an Oxford professor 
of Celtic might have touched the flinty heart of Lord 
Ashburnham. 25 

At this moment, when the narrow Philistinism, 
which has long had things its own way in England, 
is showing its natural fruits, and we are beginning to 
feel ashamed, and uneasy, and alarmed at it ; now, 
when we are becoming aware that we have sacrificed 30 
to Philistinism culture, and insight, and dignity, and 
acceptance, and weight among the nations, and hold 



• THE MODERN ENGLISHMAiY. 241 

on events that deeply concern us, and control of the 
future, and yet that it cannot even give us the fool's 
paradise it promised us, but is apt to break down, and 
to leave us with Mr, Roebuck's and Mr. Lowe's lauda- 
5 tions of our matchless happiness, and the largest cir- 
culation in the world assured to the Daily Telegraph, 
for our only comfort ; at such a moment it needs some 
moderation not to be attacking Philistinism by storm, 
but to mine it through such gradual means as the slow 

10 approaches of culture, and the introduction of chairs 
of Celtic. But the hard unintelligence, which is just 
now our bane, cannot be conquered by storm ; it 
must be suppled and reduced by culture, by a growth 
in the variety, fulness, and sweetness of our spiritual 

15 life ; and this end can only be reached by studying 
things that are outside of ourselves, and by studying 
them disinterestedly. Let us unite ourselves with our 
better mind and with the world through science ; 
and let it be one of our angelic revenges on the Phil- 

2oistines, who among their other sins are the guilty 
authors of Fenianism, to found at Oxford a chair of 
Celtic, and to send, through the gentle ministration 
of science, a message of peace to Ireland. — On the Study 
of Celtic Literature^ ed. 1895, pp. 131-137. 



Compulsory? BDucation. 

Grubb Street, April 21, 1867. 
Sir:— 

I take up the thread of the interesting and impor- 
tant discussion on compulsory education between 
Arminius and me where I left it last night. 

" But," continued Arminius, " you were talking of 5 
compulsory education, and your common people's 
want of it. Now, my dear friend, I want you to 
understand what this principle of compulsory educa- 
tion really means. It means that to ensure, as far as 
you can, every man's being fit for his business in life, 10 
you put education as a bar, or cojidition, between him 
and what he aims at. The principle is just as good 
for one class as another, and it is only by applying it 
impartially that you save its application from being 
insolent and invidious. Our Prussian peasant stands 15 
our compelling him to instruct himself before he may 
go about his calling, because he sees we believe in 
instruction, and compel our own class, too, in a way 
to make it really feel the pressure, to instruct itself 
before it may go about its calling. Now, you propose 20 
to make old Diggs's boys instruct themselves before 
they may go bird-scaring or sheep-tending. I want 
to know what you do to make those three worthies in 



COMPULSORY EDUCATION. 243 

that justice-room instruct themselves before they may 
go acting as magistrates and judges." " Do ? " said 
I ; "why, just look what they have done all of them- 
selves. Lumpington and Hittall have had a public- 
5 school and university education; Bottles has had Dr. 
Silverpump's, and the practical training of business. 
What on earth would you have us make them do 
more ? " " Qualify themselves for administrative or 
judicial functions, if they exercise them," said Ar- 

10 minius. " That is what really answers, in their case, 
to the compulsion you propose to apply to Diggs's 
boys. Sending Lord Lumpington and Mr. Hittall to 
school is nothing; the natural course of things takes 
them there. Don't suppose that, by doing this, you 

15 are applying the principle of compulsory education 
fairly, and as you apply it to Diggs's boys. You are 
not interposing, for the rich, education as a bar or 
condition between them and that which they aim at. 
But interpose it, as we do, between the rich and things 

20 they aim at, and I will say something to you. I 
should like to know what has made Lord Lumpington 
a magistrate ? " " Made Lord Lumpington a magis- 
trate ? " said I ; " why, the Lumpington estate, to be 
sure." " And the Reverend Esau Hittall ? " con- 

25 tinned Arminius. " Why, the Lumpington living, of 
course," said I. " And that man Bottles ? " he went on. 
" His English energy and self-reliance," I answered 
very stiffly, for Arminius's incessant carping began 
to put me in a huff ; " those same incomparable and 

30 truly British qualities which have just triumphed over 
every obstacle and given us the Atlantic telegraph ! — 
and let me tell you. Von T., in my opinion it will be 



244 COMPULSORY EDUCATION. 

a long time before the * Geist ' of any pedant of a 
Prussian professor gives us anything half so valuable 
as that." " Pshaw ! " replied Arminius, contemptu- 
ously; " that great rope, with a Pliilistine at each end 
of it talking inutilities ! 5 

" But in my country," he went on, ''we should have 
begun to put a pressure on these future magistrates at 
school. Before we allowed Lord Lumpington and 
Mr. Hittall to go to the university at all, we should 
have examined them, and we should not have trusted lo 
the keepers of that absurd cockpit you took me down 
to see, to examine them as they chose, and send them 
jogging comfortably off to the university on their 
lame longs and shorts. No; there would have been 
some Mr. Grote as School Board Commissary, pitch- 15 
ing into them questions about history, and some Mr. 
Lowe, as Crown Patronage Commissary, pitching into 
them questions about English literature; and these 
young men would have been kept from the university, 
as Diggs's boys are kept from their bird-scaring, till 20 
they instructed themselves. Then, if, after three 
years of their university, they wanted to be magis- 
trates, another pressure ! — a great Civil Service exam- 
ination before a board of experts, an examination in 
English law, Roman law, English history, history of 25 

jurisprudence " '* A most abominable liberty to 

take with Lumpington and Hittall ! " exclaimed I. 
" Then your compulsory education is a most abomi- 
nable liberty to take with Diggs's boys," retorted Ar- 
minius. " But, good gracious ! my dear Arminius," 30 
expostulated I, " do you really mean to maintain that 
a man can't put old Diggs in quod for snaring a hare 



CO MP UL SOR Y ED L/C A TION. 245 

without all this elaborate apparatus of Roman law and 
history of jurisprudence ? " " And do you really mean 
to maintain," returned Arminius, " that a man can't 
go bird-scaring or sheep-tending without all this elab- 
5 orate apparatus of a compulsory school ? " " Oh, 
but," I answered, " to live at all, even at the lowest 
stage of human life, a man needs instruction." " Well," 
returned Arminius, "and to administer at all, even at 
the lowest stage of public administration, a man needs 

10 instruction." "We have never found it so," said I. 

Arminius shrugged his shoulders and was silent. 

By this time the proceedings in the justice-room were 

drawn to an end, the majesty of the law had been 

vindicated against old Diggs, and the magistrates were 

15 coming out. I never saw a finer spectacle than my 
friend Arminius presented, as he stood by to gaze on 
the august trio as they passed. His pilot-coat was 
tightly buttoned round his stout form, his light blue 
eye shone, his sanguine cheeks were ruddier than ever 

20 with the cold morning and the excitement of dis- 
course, his fell of tow was blown about by the March 
wind, and volumes of tobacco-smoke issued from his 
lips. So in old days stood, I imagine, his great name- 
sake by the banks of the Lippe, glaring on the Roman 

25 legions before their destruction. 

Lord Lumpington was the first who came out. His 
lordship good-naturedly recognised me with a nod, 
and then eyeing Arminius with surprise and curiosity: 
" Whom on earth have you got there ? " he whispered. 

30 " A very distinguished young Prussian savant,'' replied 
I; and then dropping my voice, in my most impressive 
undertones I added: " And a young man of very good 



2 46 CO Mr UL SOR V ED UCA TION. 

family, besides, my lord." Lord Lumpington looked 
at Arminius again; smiled, shook his head, and then, 
turning away, and half aloud: '' Can't compliment you 
on your friend," says he. 

As for that centaur Hittall, who thinks on nothings 
on earth but field-sports, and in the performance of 
his sacred duties never warms up except when he 
lights on some passage about hunting or fowling, he 
always, whenever he meets me, remembers that in my 
unregenerate days, before Arminius inoculated me lo 
with a passion for intellect, I was rather fond of shoot- 
ing, and not quite such a successful shot as Hittall 
himself. So, the moment he catches sight of me: 
"How d'ye do, old fellow?" he blurts out; ''well, 
been shooting any straighter this year than you used 15 
to, eh ? " 

I turned from him in pity, and then I noticed 
Arminius, who had unluckily heard Lord Lumping- 
ton's unfavourable comment on him, absolutely purple 
with rage and blowing like a turkey-cock. " Never 20 
mind, Arminius," said I soothingly; '* run after 
Lumpington, and ask him the square root of thirty- 
six." But now it was my turn to be a little annoyed, 
for at the same instant Mr. Bottles stepped into his 
brougham, which was waiting for him, and observing 25 
Arminius, his old enemy of the Reigate train, he took 
no notice whatever of me who stood there, with my 
hat in my hand, practising all the airs and graces I 
have learnt on the Continent; but, with that want of 
amenity I so often have to deplore in my countrymen, 30 
he pulled up the glass on our side with a grunt and a 
jerk, and drove off like the wind, leaving Arminius in 



COMPULSORY EDUCATION. 247 

a very bad temper indeed, and me, I confess, a good 
deal shocked and mortified. 

However, both Arminius and I got over it, and have 
now returned to London, where I hope we shall before 
5 long have another good talk about educational mat- 
ters. Whatever Arminius may say, I am still for 
going straight, with all our heart and soul, at compul- 
sory education for the lower orders. Why, good 
heavens ! Sir, with our present squeezable Ministry, 

10 we are evidently drifting fast to household suffrage, 
pure and simple ; and I observe, moreover, a Jacob- 
inical spirit growing up in some quarters which gives 
me more alarm than even household suffrage. My 
elevated position in Grub Street, Sir, where I sit com- 

15 mercing with the stars, commands a view of a certain 
spacious and secluded back yard ; and in that back 
yard, Sir, I tell you confidentially that I saw the other 
day with my own eyes that powerful young publicist, 
Mr. Frederic Harrison, in full evening costume, fur- 

2obishingup a guillotine. These things are very seri- 
ous ; and I say, if the masses are to have power, let 
them be instructed, and don't swamp with ignorance 
and unreason the education and intelligence which 
now bear rule amongst us. For my part, when I think 

25 of Lumpington's estate, family, and connections, when 
I think of Hittall's shooting, and of the energy and 
self-reliance of Bottles, and when I see the unex- 
ampled pitch of splendour and security to which these 
have conducted us, I am bent, I own, on trying to 

30 make the new elemq^ts of our political system 
worthy of the old ; and I say kindly, but firmly, to 
the compound householder in the French poet's beau- 



24S COMPULSORY EDUCATION. 

tiful words/ slightly altered: " Be Great, O working 
class, for the middle and upper class are great ! " 
I am, Sir, 

Your humble servant, 

Matthew Arnold. 5 

To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. 



(From the autumn of this year (1867) dates one 01 
the most painful memories of my life. I have men- 
tioned in the last letter but one how in the spring I 
was commencing the study of German philosophy 10 
with Arminius. In the autumn of that year the cele- 
brated young Comtist, Mr. Frederic Harrison, resent- 
ing some supposed irreverence of mine towards his 
master, permitted himself, in a squib, brilliant indeed, 
but unjustifiably severe, to make game of my inapti- 15 
tude for philosophical pursuits. It was on this occa- 
sion he launched the damning sentence: "We seek 
vainly in Mr. A. a system of philosophy with prin- 
ciples coherent, interdependent, subordinate, and 
derivative." The blow came at an unlucky moment 20 
for me. I was studying, as I have said, German phi- 
losophy with Arminius ; we were then engaged on 
Hegel's *' Phenomenology of Geist,*' and it was my 
habit to develop to Arminius, at great length, my views 
of the meaning of his great but difficult countryman. 25 
One morning I had, perhaps, been a little fuller than 
usual over a very profound chapter. Arminius was 
suffering from dyspepsia (brought on, as I believe, 

' " Et tachez d'etre grand, car le peuple grandit." 



COMPULSORY education: ^49, 

by incessant smoking); his temper, always irritable, 
seemed suddenly to burst from all control, — he flung 
the Phdnomenologie to the other end of the room, ex- 
claiming : *' That smart young fellow is quite right ! 
5 it is impossible to make a silk purse out of a sow's 
ear ! '' This led to a rupture, in which I think I may 
fairly say that the chief blame was not on my side. 
But two invaluable years were thus lost ; Arminius 
abandoned me for Mr. Frederic Harrison, who must 

lo certainly have many memoranda of his later conver- 
sations, but has never given them, as I always did mine 
of his earlier ones, to the world. A melancholy occa- 
sion brought Arminius and me together again in 
1869; the sparkling pen of my friend Leo has luckily 

15 preserved the record of what then passed.) — Ed, 
Friendshifs Garland, ed. 1896, pp. 266-273. 




** %itc a 2)ream ! '* 

Versailles, Noveviber 26, 1870. 
MoN Cher, — 

An event has just happened which I confess frankly 
will afflict others more than it does me, but which you 
ought to be informed of. 

Early this morning I was passing between Rueil and 5 
Bougival, opposite Mont Valerien. How came I in 
that place at that liour ? Mon cher^ forgive my folly ! 
You have read Romeo and Juliet^ you have seen me at 
Cremorne, and though Mars has just now this belle 
France in his gripe, yet you remember, I hope, enough 10 
of your classics to know that, where Mars is, Venus is 
never very far off. Early this morning, then, I was be- 
tween Rueil and Bougival, with Mont Valerien in grim 
proximity. On a bank by a poplar-tree at the road- 
side, I saw a knot of German soldiers, gathered evi- 15 
dently round a wounded man. I approached and 
frankly tendered my help, in the name of British 
humanity. What answer I may have got I do not 
know ; for, petrified with astonishment, I recognised 
in the wounded man our familiar acquaintance, Ar- 20 
minius von Thunder-ten-Tronckh. A Prussian helmet 
was stuck on his head, but there was the old hassock 
of whity-brown hair, — there was the old square face, — 



''LIFE A DREAM!'' 2^1 

there was the old blue pilot coat ! He was shot 
through the chest, and evidently near his end. He 
had been on outpost duty ; — the night had been quiet, 
but a few random shots had been fired. One of these 
5 had struck Arminius in the breast, and gone right 
through his body. By this stray bullet, without glory, 
without a battle, without even a foe in sight, had 
fallen the last of the Von Thunder-ten-Tronckhs"! 
He knew me, and with a nod, " Ah," said he, " the 

10 rowdy Philistine ! " You know his turn, outre in my 
opinion, for flinging nicknames right and left. The 
present, however, was not a moment for resentment. 
The Germans saw that their comrade was in friendly 
hands, and gladly left him with me. He had evi- 

15 dently but a few minutes to live. I sate down on the 
bank by him, and asked him if I could do anything to 
relieve him. ^ He shook his head. Any message to his 
friends in England ? He nodded. I ran over the 
most prominent names which occurred to me of the 

20 old set. First, our Amphitryon, Mr. Bottles. " Say to 
Bottles from me," s-aid Arminius coldly, ** that I hope 
he will be comfortable with his dead wife's sister." 
Next, Mr. Frederic Harrison. " Tell him," says 
Arminius, " to do more in literature, — he has a talent 

25 for it ; and to avoid Carlylese as he would the devil." 
Then I mentioned a personage to whom Arminius had 
taken a great fancy last spring, and of whose witty 
writings some people had, absurdly enough, given Mr. 
Matthew Arnold the credit, — Azamat-Batuk. Both 

30 writers are simple ; but Azamat's is the simplicity of 
shrewdness, the other's of helplessness. At hearing 
the clever Turk's name, " Tell him only," whispers 



252 ''LIFE A DREAM!'' 

Arminius, "when he writes about the sex, not to show 
such a turn for sailing so very near the wind ! " 
Lastly, I mentioned Mr. Matthew Arnold. I hope I 
rate this poor soul's feeble and rambling performances 
at their proper value ; but I am bound to say that at 5 
the mention of his name Arminius showed signs of 
tenderness. " Poor fellow ! " sighed he ; *' he had a 
soft head, but I valued his heart. Tell him I leave 
him my ideas, — the easier ones ; and advise him from 
me," he added, with a faint smile, "' to let his Dissen- 10 
ters go to the devil their own way ! " 

At this instant there was a movement on the road at 
a little distance from where we were, — some of the 
Prussian Princes, I believe, passing ; at any rate, we 
heard the honest German soldiers Hoch-ing, hur- 15 
rahing, and God-blessing, in their true-hearted but 
somewhat rococo manner. A flush passed over Von 
Thunder-ten-Tronckh's face. " God bless Germany,'' 
he murmured, *' and confound all her kings and 
princelings !" These were his last coherent words. 20 
His eyes closed and he seemed to become uncon- 
scious. I stooped over him and inquired if he had 
any wishes about his interment. *' Pangloss — Mr. 
Lowe — mausoleum — Caterham," was all that, in 
broken words, I could gather from him. His breath 25 
came with more and more difliculty, his fingers felt 
instinctively for his tobacco-pouch, his lips twitched ; 
— he was gone. 

So died, 7fio7i cher, an arrant Republican, and, to 
speak my real mind, a most unpleasant companion, 30 
His great name and lineage imposed on the Bottles 
family, and authors who had never succeeded with the 



''LIFE A DREAM!" 253 

British public took pleasure in his disparaging criti- 
cisms on our free and noble country; but for my part 
I always thought him an overrated man. 

Meanwhile I was alone with his remains. His 
5 notion of their being transported to Caterham was of 
course impracticable. Still, I did not like to leave an 
old acquaintance to the crows, and I looked round in 
perplexity. Fortune in the most unexpected manner 
befriended me. The grounds of a handsome villa 

10 came down to the road close to where I was ; at the 
end of the grounds and overhanging the road was 
a summer-house. Its shutters had been closed when 
I first discovered Arminius; but while I was occupied 
with him they had been opened, and a gay trio was 

15 visible within the summer-house at breakfast. I could 
scarcely believe my eyes for satisfaction. Three Eng- 
lish members of Parliament, celebrated for their 
ardent charity and advanced Liberalism, were sitting 
before me adorned with a red cross and eating a 

2oStrasburg pie ! I approached them and requested 
their aid to bury Arminius. My request seemed to 
occasion them painful embarrassment ; they muttered 
something about " a breach of the understanding," 
and went on with their breakfast. I insisted, how- 

25 ever ; and at length, having stipulated that what they 
were about to do should on no account be drawn into 
a precedent, they left their breakfast, and together we 
buried Arminius under the poplar-tree. It was a 
hurried business, for my friends had an engagement 

30 to lunch at Versailles at noon. Poor Von Thunder- 
ten-Tronckh, the earth lies light on him, indeed! I 
could see, as I left him, the blue of his pilot coat and 



254 ''LIFE A DREAM!'' 

the vvhity-brown of his hair through the mould we had 
scattered over him. 

My benevolent helpers and I then made our way 
together to Versailles. As I parted from them at the 
Hotel des Reservoirs I met Sala. Little as I liked 5 
Arminius, the melancholy scene I had just gone 
through had shaken me, and I needed sympathy. I 
told Sala what had happened. " The old story," 
says Sala; " ///> a dream I Take a glass of brandy." 
He then inquired who my friends were. " Three 10 
admirable members of Parliament," I cried, " who, 
donning the cross of charity " ''I know," inter- 
rupted Sala ; " the cleverest thing out ! " 

But the emotions of this agitating day were not 
yet over. While Sala was speaking, a group had 15 
formed before the hotel near us, and our attention 
was drawn to its central figure. Dr. Russell, of the 
Ti?nes, was preparing to mount his war-horse. You 
know the sort of thing, — he has described it himself 
over and over again. Bismarck at his horse's head, 20 
the Crown Prince holding his stirrup, and the old 
King of Prussia hoisting Russell into the saddle. 
When he was there, the distinguished public servant 
waved his hand in acknowledgment, and rode slowly 
down the street accompanied by the gamins of Ver- 25 
sailles, who even in their present dejection could not 
forbear a few involuntary cries of '^ Quel homme ! '' 
Always unassuming, he alighted at the lodgings of 
the Grand Duke of Oldenburg, a potentate of the 
second or even the third order, who had beckoned to 30 
him from the window. 

The agitation of this scene for me, however (may 



''LIFE A DREAM!" 255 

I not add, mon cher, for you also, and for the whole 
British press ?), lay in a suggestion which it called 
forth from Sala. "It is all very well," said Sala, 
" but old Russell's guns are getting a little honey- 

5 combed ; anybody can perceive that. He will have 
to be pensioned off, and why should you not succeed 
him ? " We passed the afternoon in talking the thing 
over, and I think I may assure you that a train has 
been laid of which you will see the effects shortly. 

10 For my part, I can afford to wait till the pear is 
ripe ; yet I cannot, without a thrill of excitement, 
think of inoculating the respectable but somewhat 
ponderous Ti?nes and its readers with the divine 
madness of our new style, — the style we have formed 

15 upon Sala. The world, mon cher, knows that man 
but imperfectly. I do not class him with the great 
masters of human thought and human literature, 
— Plato, Shakspeare, Confucius, Charles Dickens. 
Sala, like us his disciples, has studied in the book of 

20 the world even more than in the world of books. 
But his career and genius have given him somehow 
the secret of a literary mixture novel and fascinating 
in the last degree : he blends the airy epicureanism 
of the salons of Augustus with the full-bodied gaiety 

25 of our English Cider-cellar. With our people and 
country, mon cher, this mixture, you may rely upon 
it, is now the very thing to go down ; there arises 
every day a larger public for it ; and we, Sala's 
disciples, may be trusted not willingly to let it die. — 

30 Tout a vous, A Young Lion.^ 

To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. 
' I am bound to say that in attempting to verify Leo's graphic 



256 ''LIFE A DREAM!'' 

(I have thought that the memorial raised to 
Arminius would not be complete without the follow- 
ing essay, in which, though his name is not actually 
mentioned, he will be at once recognised as the lead- 
ing spirit of the foreigners whose conversation is 5 
quoted. 

Much as I owe to his intellect, I cannot help some- 
times regretting that the spirit of youthful paradox 
which led me originally to question the perfections . 
of my countrymen, should have been, as it were, 10 
prevented from dying out by my meeting, six years 
ago, with Arminius. The Saturday Review^ in an 
article called " Mr. Matthew Arnold and his Country- 
men," had taken my correction in hand, and I was 
in a fair way of amendment, when the intervention 15 
of Arminius stopped the cure, and turned me, as has 
been often said, into a mere mouthpiece of this 
dogmatic young Prussian. It was not that I did 
not often dislike his spirit and boldly stand up to 
him ; but, on the whole, my intellect was (there is 20 

description of Dr. Russell's mounting on horseback, from the 
latter's own excellent correspondence, to which Leo refers us, I 
have been unsuccessful. Repeatedly I have seemed to be on 
the trace of what my friend meant, but the particular descrip- 
tion he alludes to I have never been lucky enough to light 25 
upon. 

I may add that, in spite of what Leo says of the train he and 
Mr. Sala have laid, of Dr. Russell's approaching retirement, of 
Leo's prospect of succeeding him, of the charm of the leonine 
style, and of the disposition of the public mind to be fascinated 30 
by it, — I cannot myself believe that either the public, or the 
proprietors of the Times, are yet ripe for a change so revolu- 
tionary. But Leo was always sanguine. — Ed, 



''LIFE A DREAM!'' 257 

no use denying it) overmatched by his. The follow- 
ing essay, which appeared at the beginning of 1866, 
was the first proof of this fatal predominance, 
which has in many ways cost me so dear.) — Ed. 
t^ Friendship' s Garland, ed. 1896, pp. 309-316. 



Bmerfca. 

Our topic at this moment is the influence of 
religious establishments on culture ; and it is remark- 
able that Mr. Bright, who has taken lately to repre- 
senting himself as, above all, a promoter of reason 
and of the simple natural truth of things, and his 5 
policy as a fostering of the growth of intelligence, — 
just the aims, as is well known, of culture also, — Mr. 
Bright, in a speech at Birmingham about education, 
seized on the very point which seems to concern our 
topic, when he said : *' I believe the people of the 10 
United States have offered to the world more 
valuable information during the last forty years, than 
all Europe put together." So America, without 
religious establishments, seems to get ahead of us 
all, even in light and the things of the mind. 15 

On the other hand, another friend of reason and 
the simple natural truth of things, M. Renan, says of 
America, in a book he has recently published, what 
seems to conflict violently with what Mr. Bright says. 
Mr. Bright avers that not only have the United States 20 
thus informed Europe, but they have done it without 
a great apparatus of higher and scientific instruction 
and by dint of all classes in America being " suffi- 
ciently educated to be able to read, and to compre- 
hend, and to think; and that, I maintain, is the 25 
foundation of all subsequent progress." And then 

258 



AMERICA. 259 

comes M. Renan, and says : " The sound instruction 
of the people is an effect of the high culture of certain 
classes. The countries which^ like the United States^ 
have created a considerable popular instruction without 
5 any serious higher instruction, will long have to expiate 
this fault by their intellectual mediocrity, their vulgarity 
of fnanners, their superficial spirit ^ their lack of ge7ieral 
intelligence y ^ 

Now, which of these two friends of light are we to 

10 believe? M. Renan seems more to have in view 
what we ourselves mean by culture ; because Mr. 
Bright always has in his eye what he calls " a com- 
mendable interest" in politics and in political agita- 
tions, i^s he said only the other day at Birminhham : 

15 "" At this moment, — in fact, I may say at every 
moment in the history of a free country, — there is 
nothing that is so much worth discussing as politics." 
And he keeps repeating, with all the powers of his 
noble oratory, the old story, how to the thoughtful- 

2oness and intelligence of the people of great towns we 
owe all our improvements in the last thirty years, and 
how these improvements have hitherto consisted in 
Parliamentary reform, and free trade, and abolition 
of Church rates, and so on ; and how they are now 

25 about to consist in getting rid of minority-members, 
and in introducing a free breakfast-table, and in 
abolishing the Irish Church by the power of the 

' " Les pays qui, comme les Etats-Unis, ont cree un enseigne- 

ment populaire considerable sans instruction superieure serieuse, 

30 expieront longtemps encore leur faute par leur mediocrite intel- 

lectuelle, leur grossierete de moeurs, leur esprit superficiel, leur 

manque d'intelligence generale." 



26o AMERICA. 

Nonconformists' antipathy to establishments, and 
much more of tlie same kind. And though our 
pauperism and ignorance, and all the questions which 
are called social, seem now to be forcing themselves 
upon his mind, yet he still goes on with his glorifying 5 
of the great towns, and the Liberals, and their opera- 
tions for the last thirty years. It never seems to occur 
to him that the present troubled state of our social 
life has anything to do with the thirty years' blind 
worship of their nostrums by himself and our Liberal 10 
friends, or that it throws any doubts upon the sufifi- 
ciency of this worship. But he thinks that what is 
still amiss is due to the stupidity of the Tories, and 
will be cured by the thoughtfulness and intelligence 
of the great towns, and by the Liberals going on 15 
gloriously with their political operations as before ; or 
that it will cure itself. So we see what Mr. Bright 
means by thoughtfulness and intelligence, and in what 
matter, according to him, we are to grow in them. 
And, no doubt, in America all classes read their news- 20 
paper, and take a commendable interest in politics, 
more than here or anywhere else in Europe. 

But in the following essay we have been led to 
doubt the efficiency of all this political operating, 
pursued mechanically as our race pursues it ; and we 25 
found \\^2X general intelligence, as M. Renan calls it, or, 
as we say, attention to the reason of things, was just 
what we were without, and that we were without it 
because we worshipped our machinery so devoutly. 
Therefore, we conclude that M. Renan, more than 30 
Mr. Bright, means by reason and intelligence the same 
|hing as Aye do. And when M. Renan 3a)'s that 



AMERICA. 261 

America, that chosen home of newspapers and politics, 
is without general intelligence, we think it likely, from 
the circumstances of the case, that this is so ; and 
that in the things of the mind, and in culture and 

5 totality, America, instead of surpassing us all, falls 
short. 

And, — to keep to our point of the influence of 
religious establishments upon culture and a high 
development of our humanity, — we can surely see 

10 reasons why, with all her energy and fine gifts, 
America does not show more of this development, or 
more promise of this. In the following essay it will 
be seen how our society distributes itself into Bar- 
barians, Philistines, and Populace ; and America is 

15 just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and 
the Populace nearly. This leaves the Philistines for 
the great bulk of the nation ; — a livelier sort of Philis- 
tine than ours, and with the pressure and false ideal 
of our Barbarians taken away, but left all the more to 

20 himself and to have his full swing. And as we have 
found that the strongest and most vital part of English 
Philistinism was the Puritan and Hebraising middle 
class, and that its Hebraising keeps it from culture 
and totality, so it is notorious that the people of the 

25 United States issues from this class, and reproduces 
its tendencies, — its narrow conception of man's 
spiritual range and of his one thing needful. From 
Maine to Florida, and back again, all America He- 
braises. Difficult as it is to speak of a people merely 

30 from what one reads, yet that, I think, one may with- 
out much fear of contradiction say. I mean, v/hen in 
the United States any spiritual si^e \xs man is \yakened 



to activity, it is generally the religious side, and the 
religious side in a narrow way. Social reformers go 
to Moses or St. Paul for their doctrines, and have no 
notion there is anywhere else to go to ; earnest young 
men at schools and universities, instead of conceivings 
salvation as a harmonious perfection only to be won 
by unreservedly cultivating many sides in us, conceive 
of it in the old Puritan fashion, and fling themselves 
ardently upon it in the old, false ways of this fashion, 
which we know so well, and such as Mr. Hammond, lo 
the American revivalist, has lately at Mr. Spurgeon's 
Tabernacle been refreshing our memory with. 

Now, if America thus Hebraises more than either 
England or Germany, will any one deny that the absence 
of religious establishments has much to do with it ? 15 
^ We have seen how establishments tend to give us a 
sense of a historical life of the human spirit, outside 
and beyond our own fancies and feelings ; how they 
thus tend to suggest new sides and sympathies in us 
to cultivate ; how, further, by saving us from having 20 
to invent and fight for our own forms of religion, they 
give us leisure and calm to steady our view of religion 
itself, — the most overpowering of objects, as it is the 
grandest, — and to enlarge our first crude notions of 
the one thing needful. But, in a serious people, 25 
where every one has to choose and strive for his own 
order and discipline of religion, the contention about 
these non-essentials occupies his mind. His first 
crude notions about the one thing needful do not get 
purged, and they invade the whole spiritual man in 30 
him, and then, making a solitude, they call it heavenly 
peace. 



AMERICA. 263 

I remember a Nonconformist manufacturer, in a 
town of the Midland counties, telling me that when he 
first came there, some years ago, the place had no 
Dissenters ; but he had opened an Independent chapel 
5 in it, and now Church and Dissent were pretty equally 
divided, with sharp contests between them. I said 
that this seemed a pity. *' A pity ? " cried he ; " not 
at all ! Only think of all the zeal and activity which 
the collision calls forth ! " "Ah, but, my dear friend," 

10 1 answered, "only think of all the nonsense which 
you now hold quite firmly, which you would never 
have held if you had not been contradicting your 
adversary in it all these years ! " The more serious 
the people, and the more prominent the religious side 

15 in it, the greater is the danger of this side, if set to 
choose out forms for itself and fight for existence, 
swelling and spreading till it swallows all other 
spiritual sides up, intercepts and absorbs all nutriment 
which should have gone to them, and leaves Hebraism 

20 rampant in us and Hellenism stamped out. 

Culture, and the harmonious perfection of our 
whole being, and what we call totality, then become 
quite secondary matters. And even the institutions, 
which should develop these, take the same narrow 

25 and partial view of humanity and its wants as the free 
religious communities take. Just as the free churches 
of Mr. Beecher or Brother Noyes, with their provin- 
cialism and want of centrality, make m.ere Hebraisers 
in religion, and not perfect men, so the university of 

30 Mr. Ezra Cornell, a really noble monument of his 
munificence, yet seems to rest on a misconception of 
what culture truly is, and to be calculated to produce 



264 AMERICA. 

miners, or engineers, or architects, not sweetness and 
light. 

And, therefore, when Mr. White asks the same kind 
of question about America that he has asked about 
England, and wants to know whether, without religious 5 
establishments, as much is not done in America for 
the higher national life as is done for that life here, 
we answer in the same way as we did before, that as 
much is not done. Because to enable and stir up 
people to read their Bible and the newspapers, and to 10 
get a practical knowledge of their business, does not 
serve to the higher spiritual life of a nation so much 
as culture, truly conceived, serves ; and a true con- 
ception of culture is, as M. Renan's words show, just 
what America fails in. 15 

To the many who think that spirituality, and sweet- 
ness, and light, are all moonshine, this will not appear 
to matter much ; but with us, who value them, and 
who think that we have traced much of our present 
discomfort to the want of them, it weighs a great deal. 20 
So not only do we say that the Nonconformists have 
got provincialism and lost totality by the want of a 
religious establishment, but we say that the very 
example which they bring forward to help their case 
makes against them ; and that when they triumphantly 25 
show us America without religious establishments, 
they only show us a whole nation touched, amidst all 
its greatness and promise, with that provincialism 
which it is our aim to extirpate in the English Non- 
conformists. — Culture and A?mrchy, ed. 1896, pp. xxi-30 
xxviii. 



Bmerson. 

Forty years ago, when I was an undergraduate at 
Oxford, voices were in the air there which haunt my 
memory still. Happy the man who in that susceptible 
season of youth hears such voices ! they are a posses- 
5 sion to him for ever. No such voices as those which 
we heard in our youth at Oxford are sounding there 
now. Oxford has more criticism now, more knowl- 
edge, more light ; but such voices as those of our 
youth it has no longer. The name of Cardinal New- 

loman is a great name to the imagination still ; his 
genius and his style are still things of power. But he 
is over eighty years old ; he is in the Oratory at Bir- 
mingham ; he has adopted, for the doubts and difficul- 
ties which beset men's minds to-day, a solution which, 

15 to speak frankly, is impossible. Forty years ago he 
was in the very prime of life ; he was close at hand 
to us at Oxford ; he was preaching in St. Mary's pul- 
pit every Sunday ; he seemed about to transform and 
to renew what was for us the most national and 

20 natural institution in the world, the Church of Eng- 
land. Who could resist the charm of that spiritual 
apparition, gliding in the dim afternoon light through 
the aisles of St. Mary's, rising into the pulpit, and 
then, in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the 

25 silence with words and thoughts which were a reli- 
gious music, — subtle, sweet, mournful ? I seem to 



266 EMERSON. 

hear him still, saying : *' After the fever of life, after 
wearinesses and sicknesses, fightings and despondings, 
languor and fretfulness, struggling and succeeding ; 
after all the changes and chances of this troubled, 
unhealthy state, — at length comes death, at length 5 
the white throne of God, at length the beatific vision." 
Or, if we followed him back to his seclusion at Little- 
more, that dreary village by the London road, and to 
the house of retreat and the church which he built 
there, — a mean house such as Paul might have lived 10 
in when he was tent-making at Ephesus, a church 
plain and thinly sown with worshippers, — who could 
resist him there either, welcoming back to the severe 
joys of church-fellowship, and of daily worship and 
prayer, the firstlings of a generation which had well- 15 
nigh forgotten them ? Again I seem to hear him : 
*' The season is chill and dark, and the breath of the 
morning is damp, and worshippers are few ; but all 
this befits those who are by their profession penitents 
and mourners, watchers and pilgrims. More dear to 20 
them that loneliness, more cheerful that severity, and 
more bright that gloom, than all those aids and appli- 
ances of luxury by which men nowadays attempt to 
make prayer less disagreeable to them. True faith 
does not covet comforts ; they who realise that awful 25 
day, when they shall see Him face to face whose eyes 
are as a flame of fire, will as little bargain to pray 
pleasantly now as they will think of doing so then." 

Somewhere or other I have spoken of those " last 
enchantments of the Middle Age " which Oxford 30 
sheds around us, and here they were ! But there 
were other voices sounding in our ear besides New- 



EMERSON. 267 

man's. There was the puissant voice of Carlyle ; so 
sorely strained, over-used, and misused since, but 
then fresh, comparatively sound, and reaching our 
hearts with true, pathetic eloquence. Who can forget 
5 the emotion of receiving in its first freshness such a 
sentence as that sentence of Carlyle upon Edward 
Irving, then just dead : " Scotland sent him forth a 
herculean man ; our mad Babylon wore and wasted 
him with all her engines, — and it took her twelve 

10 years ! " A greater voice still, — the greatest voice of 
the century, — came to us in those youthful years 
through Carlyle : the voice of Goethe. To this day, 
— such is the force of youthful associations, — I read 
the Wilhelm Meister with more pleasure in Carlyle's 

15 translation than in the original. The large, liberal 
view of human life in Wilhelm Meister^ how novel it 
was to the Englishman in those days ! and it was 
salutary, too, and educative for him, doubtless, as 
well as novel. But what moved us most in Wilhelm 

20 Meister was that which, after all, will always move 
the young most, — the poetry, the eloquence. Never, 
surely, was Carlyle's prose so beautiful and pure as 
in his rendering of the Youths' dirge over Mignon ! — 
" Well is our treasure now laid up, the fair image of 

25 the past. Here sleeps it in the marble, undecaying ; 
in your hearts, also, it lives, it works. Travel, travel, 
back into life ! Take along with you this holy earnest- 
ness, for earnestness alone makes life eternity." Here 
we had the voice of the great Goethe ; — not the stiff, 

30 and hindered, and frigid, and factitious Goethe who 
speaks to us too often from those sixty volumes of 
his, but of the great Goethe, and the true one. 



268 EMERSON. 

And besides those voices, there came to us in that 
old Oxford time a voice also from this side of the 
Atlantic, — a clear and pure voice, which for my ear, 
at any rate, brought a strain as new, and moving, and 
unforgettable, as the strain of Newman, or Carlyle, or 5 
Goethe. Mr. Lowell has well described the appari- 
tion of Emerson to your young generation here, in 
that distant time of which I am speaking, and of his 
workings upon them. He was your Newman, your 
man of soul and genius visible to you in the flesh, 10 
speaking to your bodily ears, a present object for 
your heart and imagination. That is surely the most 
potent of all influences ! nothing can come up to it. 
To us at Oxford Emerson was but a voice speaking 
from three thousand miles away. But so well he 15 
spoke, that from that time forth Boston Bay and 
Concord were names invested to my ear with a senti- 
ment akin to that which invests for me the names of 
Oxford and of Weimar ; and snatches of Emerson's 
strain fixed themselves in my mind as imperishably as 20 
any of the eloquent words which I have been just 
now quoting. " Then dies the man in you ; then 
once more perish the buds of art, poetry, and science 
as they have died already in a thousand thousand 
men." " What Plato has thought, he may think ; what 25 
a saint has felt, he may feel ; what at any time has 
befallen any man, he can understand." "Trust thy- 
self ! every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept 
the place the Divine Providence has found for you, 
the society of your contemporaries, the connexion of 30 
events. Great men have always done so, and con- 
fided themselves childlike to the genius of their age ; 



EMERSON. 269 

betraying their perception that the Eternal was stir- 
ring at their heart, working through their hands, pre- 
dominating in all their being. And we are now men, 
and must accept in the highest spirit the same tran- 
5 scendent destiny ; and not pinched in a corner, not 
cowards fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers 
and benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay 
plastic under the Almighty effort, let us advance and 
advance on chaos and the dark ! " These lofty sen- 

lotences of Emerson, and a hundred others of like 
strain, I never have lost out of my memory ; I never 
can lose them. 

At last I find myself in Emerson's own country, 
and looking upon Boston Bay. Naturally I revert to 

15 the friend of my youth. It is not always pleasant 
to ask oneself questions about the friends of one's 
youth ; they cannot always well support it. Carlyle, 
for instance, in my judgment, cannot well support 
such a return upon him. Yet we should make the 

20 return ; we should part with our illusions, we should 
know the truth. When I come to this country, where 
Emerson now counts for so much, and where such 
high claims are made for him, I pull myself together, 
and ask myself what the truth about this object of 

25 my youthful admiration really is. Improper elements 
often come into our estimate of men. We have lately 
seen a German critic make Goethe the greatest of all 
poets, because Germany is now the greatest of mili- 
tary powers, and wants a poet to match. Then, too, 

30 America is a young country ; and young coun- 
tries, like young persons, are apt sometimes to evioce 
in their literary judgments a want of scale and meas- 



270 EMERSON. 

ure. I set myself, therefore, resolutely to come at a 
real estimate of Emerson, and with a leaning even to 
strictness rather than to indulgence. That is the safer 
course. Time has no indulgence ; any veils of 
illusion which we may have left around an object 5 
because we loved it, Time is sure to strip away. 

I was reading the other day a notice of Emerson 
by a serious and interesting American critic. Fifty 
or sixty passages in Emerson's poems, says this 
critic, — who had doubtless himself been nourished lo 
on Emerson's writings, and held them justly dear, — 
fifty or sixty passages from Emerson's poems have 
already entered into English speech as matter of 
familiar and universally current quotation. Here is 
a specimen of that personal sort of estimate wRich, for 15 
my part, even in speaking of authors dear to me, I 
would try to avoid. What is the kind of phrase of 
which we may fairly say that it has entered into Eng- 
ligh speech as matter of familiar quotation ! Such 
a phrase, surel}', as the "Patience on a monument "20 
of Shakespeare ; as the " Darkness visible " of Milton ; 
as the *' Where ignorance is bliss " of Gray. Of not 
one single passage in Emerson's poetry can it be truly 
said that it has become a familiar quotation like 
phrases of this kind. It is not enough that it should 25 
be familiar to his admirers, familiar in New England, 
familiar even throughout the United States ; it must 
be familiar to all readers and lovers of English 
poetry. Of not more than one or two passages in 
Emerson's poetry can it, I think, be truly said, that 30 
they stand ever-present in the memory of even many 



EMERSON. 2 7 1 

lovers of English poetry. A great number of pas- 
sages from his poetry are no doubt perfectly familiar 
to the mind and lips of the critic whom I have men- 
tioned, and perhaps a wide circle of American readers. 
5 But this is a very different thing from being matter of 
universal quotation, like the phrases of the legitimate 
poets. 

And, in truth, one of the legitimate poets, Emer- 
son, in my opinion, is not. His poetry is interesting, 

loit makes one think ; but it is not the poetry of one of 
the born poets. I say it of him with reluctance, 
although I am sure that he would have said it of him- 
self ; but I say it with reluctance, because I dislike 
giving pain to his admirers, and because all my own 

15 wish, too, is to say of him what is favourable. But I 
regard myself, not as speaking to please Emerson's 
admirers, not as speaking to please myself ; but rather, 
I repeat, as communing with Time and Nature con- 
cerning the productions of this beautiful and rare 

20 spirit, and as resigning what of him is by their unalter- 
able decree touched with caducity, in order the better 
to mark and secure that in him which is immortal. 

Milton says that poetry ought to be simple, sensu- 
ous, impassioned. Well, Emerson's poetry is seldom 

25 either simple, or sensuous, or impassioned. In 
general it lacks directness ; it lacks concreteness ; it 
lacks energy. His grammar is often embarrassed ; 
in particular, the want of clearly-marked distinction 
between the subject and the object of his sentence is 

30 a frequent cause of obscurity in him. A poem which 
shall be a plain, forcible, inevitable whole he hardly 
ever produces. Such good work as the noble lines 



272 EMERSON. 

graven on the Concord Monument is the exception 
Avith him ; such ineffective work as the " Fourth of 
July Ode " or the " Boston Hymn " is the rule. 
Even passages and single lines of thorough plainness 
and commanding force are rare in his poetry. They 5 
exist, of course ; but when we meet with them they 
give us a slight shock of surprise, so little has Emer- 
son accustomed us to them. Let me have the pleasure 
of quoting one or two of these exceptional passages : — 

" So nigh is grandeur to our dust, lo 

So near is God to man, 
When Duty whispers low, Thou must, 
The youth replies, I can.'' 

Or again this : — 

" Though love repine and reason chafe, 15 

There came a voice without reply : 
' 'Tis man's perdition to be safe, 
When for the truth he ought to die.'" 

Excellent ! but how seldom do we get from him 
a strain blown so clearly and firmly ! Take another 20 
passage where his strain has not only clearness, it 
has also grace and beauty : — 

" And ever, when the happy child 
In May beholds the blooming wild, 
And hears in heaven the bluebird sing, 25 

' Onward,' he cries, ' your baskets bring ! 
In the next field is air more mild. 
And in yon hazy west is Eden's balmier spring.' " 

In the style and cadence here there is a reminis- 
cence, I think, of Gray ; at any rate the pureness, 30 
grace, an4 l?^^^ty ^^ these lines are worthy even pf 



II 



I 



EMERSON. 273 

Gray. But Gray holds bis high rank as a poet, not 
merely by the beauty and grace of passages in his 
poems ; not merely by a diction generally pure in an 
age of impure diction : he holds it, above all, by the 
5 power and skill with which the evolution of his poems 
is conducted. Here is his grand superiority to Collins, 
whose diction in his best poem, the "Ode to Even- 
ing," is purer than Gray's ; but then the " Ode to 
Evening " is like a river which loses itself in the 

10 sand, whereas Gray's best poems have an evolution 
sure and satisfying. Emerson's "Mayday," from 
which I just now quoted, has no real evolution at all ; 
it is a series of observations. And, in general, his 
poems have no evolution. Take, for example, his 

15 " Titmouse." Here he has an excellent subject ; and 
his observation of Nature, moreover, is always marvel- 
lously close and fine. But compare what he makes 
of his meeting with his titmouse with what Cowper 
or Burns makes of the like kind of incident ! One 

20 never quite arrives at learning what the titmouse 
actually did for him at all, though one feels a strong 
interest and desire to learn it ; but one is reduced to 
guessing, and cannot be quite sure that after all one 
has guessed right. He is not plain and concrete 

25 enough, — in other words, not poet enough, — to be 
able to tell us. And a failure of this kind goes 
through almost all his verse, keeps him amid sym- 
bolism and allusion and the fringes of things, and, 
in spite of his spiritual power, deeply impairs his 

30 poetic value. Through the inestimable virtue of 
concreteness, a simple poem like " The Bridge " of 
lyongfellow, or the "School Pays" of Mr, Whittierj 



274 EMERSON. 

is of more poetic worth, perhaps, than all the verse 
of Emerson. 

I do not, then, place Emerson among the great 
poets. But I go further, and say that I do not place 
him among the great writers, the great men of letters. 5 
Who are the great men of letters ? They are men like 
Cicero, Plato, Bacon, Pascal, Swift, Voltaire, — writers 
with, in the first place, a genius and instinct for style ; 
writers whose prose is by a kind of native necessity 
true and sound. Now the style of Emerson, like the 10 
style of his transcendentalist friends and of the " Dial " 
so continually, — the style of Emerson is capable of 
falling into a strain like this, which I take from the 
beginning of his " Essay on Love " : " Every soul is a 
celestial being to every other soul. The heart has its 15 
sabbaths and jubilees, in which the world appears as 
a hymeneal feast, and all natural sounds and the circle 
of the seasons are erotic odes and dances." Emerson 
altered this sentence in the later editions. Like 
Wordsworth, he was in later life fond of altering ; and 20 
in general his later alterations, like those of Words- 
worth, are not improvements. He softened the pass- 
age in question, however, though without really 
mending it. I quote it in its original and strongly- 
marked form. Arthur Stanley used to relate that 25 
about the year 1840, being in conversation with some 
Americans in quarantine at Malta, and thinking to 
please them, he declared his warm admiration for 
Emerson's Essays, then recently published. How- 
ever, the Americans shook their heads, and told him 30 
that for home taste Emerson was d^cidtdXy too greeny. 
We will hope, for their sakes, that the sort of thing 



EMERSON. 275 

they had in their heads was such writing as I have just 
quoted. Unsound it is, indeed, and in a style almost 
impossible to a born man of letters. 

It is a curious thing, that quality of style which 
5 marks the great writer, the born man of letters. It 
resides in the whole tissue of his work, and of his work 
regarded as a composition for literary purposes. Bril- 
liant and powerful passages in a man's writings do 
not prove his possession of it ; it lies in their whole 

10 tissue. Emerson has passages of noble and pathetic 
eloquence, such as those which I quoted at the begin- 
ning ; he has passages of shrewd and felicitous wit ; 
he has crisp epigram ; he has passages of exquisitely 
touched observation of nature. Yet he is not a great 

15 writer ; his style has not the requisite wholeness of 
good tissue. Even Carlyle is not, in my judgment, a 
great writer. He has surpassingly powerful qualities 
of expression far more powerful than Emerson's, and 
reminding one of the gifts of expression of the great 

20 poets, — of even Shakespeare himself. What Emerson 
so admirably says of Carlyle's "devouring eyes and 
portraying hand," " those thirsty eyes, those portrait- 
eating, portrait-painting eyes of thine, those fatal per- 
ceptions," is thoroughly true. What a description is 

25 Carlyle's of the first publisher of Sartor Resarius, " to 
whom the idea of a new edition of Sarior is frightful, 
or rather ludicrous unimaginable " ; of this poor 
Eraser, in whose ** wonderful world of Tory pam- 
phleteers, conservative Younger-brothers, Regent Street 

30 loungers, Crockford gamblers, Irish Jesuits, drunken 
reporters, and miscellaneous unclean persons (whom 
nitre and much soap will not wash clean), not a soul 



276 EMERSOiV. 

has expressed the smallest wish that way ? " What a 
portrait, again, of the well-beloved John Sterling I 
*' One, and the best, of a small class extant here, who, 
nigh drowning in a black wreck of Infidelity (lighted 
up by some glare of Radicalism only, now growing 5 
dim too), and about to perish, saved themselves into a 
Coleridgian Shpvel-Hattedness." What touches in 
the invitation of Emerson to London ! "You shall 
see block-heads by the million ; Pickwick himself 
shall be visible, — innocent young Dickens, reserved for 10 
a questionable fate. The great Wordsworth shall talk 
till you yourself pronounce him to be a bore. 
Southey's complexion is still healthy mahogany brown, 
with a fleece of white hair, and eyes that seem run- 
ning at full gallop. Leigh Hunt, man of genius in the 15 
shape of a cockney, is my near neighbour, with good 
humour and no common-sense ; old Rogers with his 
pale head, white, bare, and cold as snow, with those 
large blue eyes, cruel, sorrowful, and that sardonic 
shelf chin. ' How inimitable it all is ! And finally, 20 
for one must not go on forever, this version of a Lon- 
don Sunday, with the public-houses closed during the 
hours of divine service ! " It is silent Sunday ; the 
populace not yet admitted to their beer-shops, till 
the respectabilities conclude their rubric mummeries — 25 
a much more audacious feat than beer.' Yet even 
Carlyle is not, in my judgment, to be called a great 
writer ; one cannot think of ranking him with men 
like Cicero and Plato and Swift and Voltaire. Emer- 
son freely promises to Carlyle immortality for his 30 
histories. They will not have it. Why? Because 
the materials furnished to him by that devouring eye 



EMERSON. 277 

of his, and that portraying hand, were not wrought in 
and subdued by him to what his work, regarded as a 
composition for literary purposes, required. Occur- 
ring in conversation, breaking out in familiar corre- 
5 spondence^ they are magnificent, inimitable ; nothing 
more is required of them ; thus thrown out anyhow, 
they serve their turn and fulfil their function. And, 
therefore, I should not wonder if really Carlyle lived, 
in the long run, by such an invaluable record as that 

10 correspondence between him and Emerson, of which 
we owe the publication to Mr. Charles Norton, — by 
this and not by his works, as Johnson lives in Boswell, 
not by his works. For Carlyle's sallies, as the staple 
of a literary work, become wearisome ; and as time 

15 more and more applies to Carlyle's works its stringent 
test, this will be felt more and more. Shakespeare, 
Moliere, Swift, — they, too, had, like Carlyle, the 
devouring eye and the portraying hand. But they are 
great literary masters, they are supreme writers, because 

20 they knew how to work into a literary composition 
their materials, and to subdue them to the purposes of 
literary effect. Carlyle is too wilful for this, too 
turbid, too vehement. 

You will think I deal in nothing but negatives. I 

25 have been saying that Emerson is not one of the great 
poets, the great writers. He has not their quality of 
style. He is, however, the propounder of a phi- 
losophy. The Platonic dialogues afford us the ex- 
ample of exquisite literary form and treatment given 

30 to philosophical ideas. Plato is at once a great liter- 
ary man and a great philosopher. If we speak care- 
fully, we cannot call Aristotle or Spinoza or Kant 



278 EMERSON. 

great literary men, or their productions great literary 
works. But their work is arranged with such construc- 
tive power that they build a philosophy, and are justly 
called great philosophical writers. Emerson cannot, 
I think, be called with justice a great philosophical 5 
writer. He cannot build ; his arrangement of philo- 
sophical ideas has no progress in it, no evolution ; he 
does not construct a philosophy. Emerson himself 
knew the defects of his method, or rather want of 
method, very well ; indeed, he and Carlyle criticise 10 
themselves and one another in a way which leaves 
little for any one else to do in the way of formulating 
their defects. Carlyle formulates perfectly the defects 
of his friend's poetic and literary production when he 
says of the " Dial " : " For me it is too ethereal, 15 
speculative, theoretic ; I will have all things condense 
themselves, take shape and body, if they are to have 
my sympathy." And, speaking of Emerson's orations, 
he says : "I long to see some concrete Thing, some 
Event, Man's Life, American Forest, or piece of 20 
Creation, which this Emerson loves and wonders at, 
well Emersoiiised^ — depictured by Emerson, filled with 
the life of Emerson, and cast forth from him, then to 
live by itself. If these orations balk me of this, how 
profitable soever they may be for others, I will not 25 
love them." Emerson himself formulates perfectly 
the defect of his own philosophical productions, when 
he speaks of his " formidable tendency to the lapidary 
style. I build my house of boulders." '* Here I sit 
and read and write," he says again, "with very little 30 
system, and, as far as regards composition, with the 
most fragmentary result ; paragraphs incomprehensi- 



EMERSOJV. 279 

ble, each sentence an infinitely repellent particle." 
Nothing can be truer ; and the work of a Spinoza or 
Kant, of the men who stand as great philosophical 
writers, does not proceed in this wise. 
5 Some people will tell you that Emerson's poetry, 
indeed, is too abstract, and his philosophy too vague, 
but that his best work is his English Traits. The 
English Traits are beyond question very pleasant 
reading. It is easy to praise them, easy to commend 

10 the author of them. But I insist on always trying 
Emerson's work by the highest standards. I esteem 
him too much to try his work by any other. Tried 
by the highest standards, and compared with the 
work of the excellent markers and recorders of the 

15 traits of human life, — of writers like Montaigne, La 
Bruyere, Addison, — the English Traits will not stand 
the comparison. Emerson's observation has not the 
disinterested quality of the observation of these mas- 
ters. It is the observation of a man systematically 

20 benevolent, as Hawthorne's observation in Our Old 
Home is the work of a man chagrined. Hawthorne's 
literary talent is of the first order. His subjects are 
generally not to me subjects of the highest interest ; 
but his literary talent is of the first order, the finest, I 

25 think, which America has yet produced, — finer, by 
much, than Emerson's. Yet Our Old Home is not a 
masterpiece any more than English Traits. In neither 
of them is the observer disinterested enough. The 
author's attitude in each of these cases can easily be 

30 understood and defended. Hawthorne was a sensi- 
tive man, so situated in England that he was perpetu- 
ally in contact with the British Philistine ; and the 



28o EMERSON. 

British Philistine is a trying personage. Emerson's 
systematic benevolence comes from what he himself 
calls somewhere his " persistent optimism"; and his 
persistent optimism is the root of his greatness and 
the source of his charm. But still let us keep our 5 
literary conscience true, and judge every kind of 
literary work by the laws really proper to it. The 
kind of work attempted in the English Traits and in 
Our Old Ho7ne is work which cannot be done per- 
fectly with a bias such as that given by Emerson's lo 
optimism or by Hawthorne's chagrin. Consequently, 
neither English Traits nor Our Old Home is a work 
of perfection in its kind. 

Not with the Miltons and Grays, not with the 
Platos and Spinozas, not with the Swifts and Vol- 15 
taires, not with the Montaignes and Addisons, can we 
rank Emerson. His work of various kinds, when one 
compares it with the work done in a corresponding 
kind by these masters, fails to stand the comparison. 
No man could see this clearer than Emerson himself. 20 
It is hard not to feel despondency when we contem- 
plate our failures and short-comings : and Emerson, 
the least self-flattering and the most modest of men, 
saw so plainly what was lacking to him that he had his 
moments of despondency. " Alas, my friend," he 25 
writes in reply to Carlyle, who had exhorted him to 
creative work, — " Alas, my friend, I can do no such 
gay thing as you say. I do not belong to the poets, 
but only to a low department of literature, — the 
reporters; suburban men." He deprecated his 30 
friend's praise ; praise " generous to a fault," he calls 
it; praise ''generous to the shaming of me,— cold, 



EMERSON-. 281 

fastidious, ebbing person that I am. Already in a 
former letter you had said too much good of my poor 
little arid book, which is as sand to my eyes. I can 
only say that I heartily wish the book were better ; 

5 and I must try and deserve so much favour from the 
kind gods by a bolder and truer living in the months 
to come, — such as may perchance one day release and 
invigorate this cramp hand of mine. When I see how 
much work is to be done ; what room for a poet, for 

10 any spiritualist, in this great, intelligent, sensual, and 
avaricious America, — I lament my fumbling fingers 
and stammering tongue." Again, as late as 1870, he 
writes to Carlyle : " There is no example of con- 
stancy like yours, and it always stings my stupor into 

15 temporary recovery and wonderful resolution to 
accept the noble challenge. But ' the strong hours 
conquer us '; and I am the victim of miscellany, — 
miscellany of designs, vast debility, and procrastina- 
tion." The forlorn note belonging to the phrase, 

20 *' vast debility," recalls that saddest and most dis- 
couraged of writers, the author of Obennarm^ Senan- 
cour, with whom Emerson has in truth a certain 
kinship. He has, in common with Senancour, his 
pureness, his passion for nature, his single eye ; and 

25 here we find him confessing, like Senancour, a sense in 
himself of sterility and impotence. 

And now I think I have cleared the ground. I 

have given up to Envious Time as much of Emerson 

as Time can fairly expect ever to obtain. We have 

30 not in Emerson a great poet, a great writer, a great 

philosophy-maker. His relation to us is not that of 



282 EMERSON. 

one of those personages ; yet it is a relation of, I 
think, even superior importance. His relation to us 
is more like that of the Roman Emperor Marcus 
Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius is not a great writer, a 
great philosophy-maker ; he is the friend and aider of 5 
those who would live in the spirit. Emerson is the 
same. He is the friend and aider of those who would 
live in the spirit. All the points in thinking which 
are necessary for this purpose he takes ; but he does 
not combine them into a system, or present them as a lo 
regular philosophy. Combined in a system by a man 
with the requisite talent for this kind of thing, they 
would be less useful than as Emerson gives them to 
us ; and the man with, the talent so to systematise 
them would be less impressive than Emerson. They 15 
do very well as they now stand ; like " boulders," as 
he says ; in " paragraphs incompressible, each sen- 
tence an infinitely repellent particle." In such sen- 
tences his main points recur again and again, and 
become fixed in the memory. 20 

We all know them. First and foremost, character. 
Character is everything. " That which all things tend 
to educe, — which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, 
revolutions, go to form and deliver, — is character." 
Character and self-reliance. 'Trust thyself! every 25 
heart vibrates to that iron string." And yet we have 
our being in a not ourselves. " There is a power above 
and behind us, and we are the channels of its com- 
munications." But our lives must be pitched higher. 
" Life must be lived on a higher plane; we must go up 30 
to a higher platform, to which we are always invited 
to ascend; there the whole scene changes." The good 



EMERSON, 283 

we need is for ever close to us, though we attain it 
not. *' On the brink of the waters of life and truth, 
we are miserably dying." This good is close to us, 
moreover, in our daily life, and in the familiar, homely 
5 places. " The unremitting retention of simple and 
high sentiments in obscure duties, — that is the maxim 
for us. Let us be poised and wise, and our own to- 
day. Let us treat the men and women well, — treat 
them as if they were real; perhaps they are. Men 

10 live in their fancy, like drunkards whose hands are 
too soft and tremulous for successful labour. I settle 
myself ever firmer in the creed, that we should not 
postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice 
where we are, by whomsoever we deal with; accepting 

15 our actual companions and circumstances, however 
humble or odious, as the mystic officials to whom the 
universe has delegated its whole pleasure for us. 
Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, 
you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of 

20 foreign and classic topography. But here we are; 
and if we will tarry a little we may come to learn that 
here is best. See to it only that thyself is here." 
Furthermore, the good is close to us all. " I resist 
the scepticism of our education and of our educated 

25 men, I do not believe that the differences of opinion 
and character in men are organic. I do not recog- 
nise^ besides the class of the good and the wise, a 
permanent class of sceptics, or a class of conserva- 
tives, or of malignants, or of materialists. I do not 

30 believe in the classes. Everyman has a call of the 
power to do something unique." Exclusiveness is 
deadly. '' The exclusive in social life does not see 



284 EAIERSO^r. 

that he excludes himself from enjoyment in the at- 
tempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion 
does not see that he shuts the door of heaven on him- 
self in striving to shut out others. Treat men as 
pawns and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as 5 
they. If you leave out their heart you shall lose 
your own. The selfish man suffers more from his 
selfishness than he from whom that selfishness with- 
holds some important benefit." A sound nature will 
be inclined to refuse ease and self-indulgence. '' To 10 
live with some rigour of temperance, or some extreme 
of generosity, seems to be an asceticism which com- 
mon good nature would appoint to those who are at 
ease and in plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood 
with the great multitude of suffering men.'' Compen- 15 
sation, finally, is the great law of life; it is everywhere, 
it is sure, and there is no escape from it. This is that 
*' law alive and beautiful, which works over our heads 
and under our feet. Pitiless, it avails itself of our 
success when we obey it, and of our ruin when we 20 
contravene it. We are all secret believers in it. It 
rewards actions after their nature. The reward of a 
thing well done is to have done it. The thief steals 
from himself, the swindler swindles himself. You 
must pay at last your own debt." 25 

This is tonic indeed ! And let no one object that 
it is too general; that more practical, positive direc- 
tion is what we want; that Emerson's optimism, self- 
reliance, and indifference to favourable conditions for 
our life and growth have in them something of dan- 30 
ger. " Trust thyself;" " what attracts my attention 
shall have it;" " thou2;h thou shouldst walk the world 



EMERSOiV. 285 

Over thou shalt not be able to find a condition inop- 
portune or ignoble;" "what we call vulgar society is 
that society whose poetry is not yet written, but which 
you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as 
5 any." With maxims like these, we surely, it may be 
said, run some risk of being made too well satisfied 
with our own actual self and state, however crude and 
inperfect they may be. '' Trust thyself ? '' It may be 
said that the common American or Englishman is 

10 more than enough disposed already to trust himself. 
I often reply, when our sectarians are praised for fol- 
lowing conscience : Our people are very good in 
following their conscience ; where they are not so 
good is in ascertaining whether their conscience tells 

15 them right. '' What attracts my attention shall have 
it?'' Well, that is our people's plea when they run 
after the Salvation Army and desire Messrs. Moody 
and Sankey. ' Thou shalt not be able to find a con- 
dition inopportune or ignoble ? '" But think of the 

20 turn of the good people of our race for producing a 
life of hideousness and immense ennui ; think of that 
specimen of your own New England life which Mr. 
Howells gives us in one of his charming stories which 
I was reading lately; think of the life of that ragged 

25 New England farm in the Lady of the Aroostook; think 
of Deacon Blood, and Aunt Maria, and the straight- 
backed chairs with black horse-hair seats, and Ezra 
Perkins with perfect self-reliance depositing his trav- 
ellers in the snow ! I can truly say that in the little 

30 which I have seen of the life of New England, I am 
more struck with what has been achieved than with 
the crudeness and failure. But no doubt there is still 



286 EMERSON. 

a great deal of crudeness also. Your own novelists 
say there is, and I suppose they say true. In the New 
England, as in tlie Old, our people have to learn, I 
suppose, not that their modes of life are beautiful and 
excellent already; they have rather to learn that they 5 
must transform them. 

To adopt this line of objection to Emerson's deliver- 
ances would, however, be unjust. In the first place, 
Emerson's points are in themselves true, if understood 
in a certain high sense ; they are true and fruitful. lo 
And the right work to be done, at the hour when he 
appeared, was to affirm them generally and absolutely. 
Only thus could he break through the hard and fast 
barrier of narrow, fixed ideas, which he found con- 
fronting him, and win an entrance for new ideas. 15 
Had he attempted developments which may now 
strike us as expedient, he would have excited fierce 
antagonism, and probably effected little or nothing. 
The time might come for doing other work later, but 
the work which Emerson did was the right work to be 20 
done then. 

In the second place, strong as was Emerson's 
optimism, and unconquerable as was his belief in a 
good result to emerge from all which he saw going on 
around him, no misanthropical satirist ever saw short- 25 
comings and absurdities more clearly than he did. or 
exposed them more courageously. When he sees " the 
meanness," as he calls it, 'of American politics,' he 
congratulates Washington on being 'long already 
happily dead," on being 'wrapt in his shroud and 30 
for ever safe." With how firm a touch he delineates 
the faults of your two great political parties of forty 



EMERSON. 2 87 

years ago! The Democrats, he says, "have not at 
heart the ends which give to the name of democracy 
what hope and virtue are in it. The spirit of our 
American radicalism is destructive and aimless ; it is 
5 not loving ; it has no ulterior and divine ends, but is 
destructive only out of hatred and selfishness. On 
the other side, the conservative party, composed of the 
most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the popu- 
lation, is timid, and merely defensive of property. It 

10 vindicates no right, it aspires to no real good, it 
brands no crime, it proposes no generous policy. 
From neither party, when in power, has the world any 
benefit to expect in science, art, or humanity, at all 
commensurate with the resources of the nation." Then 

15 with what subtle though kindly irony he follows the 
gradual withdrawal in New England, in the last half 
century, of tender consciences from the social 
organisations, — the bent for experiments such as that 
of Brook Farm and the like, — follows it in all its 

20 '' dissidence of dissent and Protestantism of the Pro- 
testant religion ! " He even loves to rally the New 
Englander on his philanthropical activity, and to find 
his beneficence and its institutions a bore ! " Your 
miscellaneous popular charities, the education at col- 

25 lege of fools, the building of meeting-houses to the 
vain end to which many of these now stand, alms to 
sots, and the thousand-fold relief societies, — though I 
confess with shame that I sometimes succumb and 
give the dollar, yet it is a wicked dollar, which by and 

30 by I shall have the manhood to withhold." "Our 
Sunday schools and churches and pauper societies 
are yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to please 



288 EMERSON: 

nobody. There are natural ways of arriving at the 
same ends at which these aim, but do not arrive." 
*' Nature does not like our benevolence or our learning 
much better than she likes our frauds and wars. 
When we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the 5 
Abolition convention, or the Temperance meeting, or 
the Transcendental club, into the fields and woods, 
she says to us : ' So hot, my little sir ? ' " 

Yes, truly, his insight is admirable ; his truth is 
precious. Yet the secret of his effect is not even in lo 
these ; it is in his temper. It is in the hopeful, serene, 
beautiful temper wherewith these, in Emerson, are 
indissolubly joined ; in which they work, and have 
their being. He says himself : *' We judge of a man's 
wisdom by his hope, knowing that the perception of 15 
the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth." 
If this be so, how wise is Emerson ! for never had 
man such a sense of the inexhaustibleness of nature, 
and such hope. It was the ground of his being ; it 
never failed him. Even when he is sadly avowing 20 
the imperfection of his literary power and resources, 
lamenting his fumbling fingers and stammering tongue, 
he adds : '' Yet, as I tell you, I am very easy in my 
mind and never dream of suicide. My whole phi- 
losophy, which is very real, teaches acquiescence and 25 
optimism. Sure I am that the right word will be 
spoken, though I cut out my tongue." In his old age, 
with friends dying and life failing, his tone of cheerful, 
forward-looking hope is still the same. *'A multitude 
of young men are growing up here of high promise, 30 
and I compare gladly the social poverty of my youth 
with the power on which these draw." His abiding 



EMERSON. 289 

word for us, the word by which being dead he yet 
speaks to us, is this : " That which befits us, embosomed 
in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness and 
courage, and the endeavour to realise our aspirations. 
5 Shall not the heart, which has received so much, trust 
the Power by which it lives ? " 

One can scarcely overrafe the importance of thus 
holding fast to happiness and hope. It gives to Em- 
erson's work an invaluable virtue. As Wordsworth's 

10 poetry is, in my judgment, the most important work 
done in verse, in our language, during the present 
century, so Emerson's Essays are, I think, the most 
important work done in prose. His work is more im- 
portant than Carlyle's. Let us be just to Carlyle, 

15 provoking though he often is. Not only has he that 
genius of his which makes Emerson say truly of his 
letters, that, '* they savour always of eternity." More 
than this may be said of him. The scope and upshot 
of his teaching are true ; " his guiding genius," to 

20 quote Emerson again, is really 'Miis moral sense, his 
perception of the sole importance of the truth and 
justice." But consider Carlyle's temper, as we have 
been considering Emerson's ! take his own account of 
it ! " Perhaps London is the proper place for me 

25 after all, seeing all places are ////proper : who knows ? 
Meanwhile, I lead a most dyspeptic, solitary, self- 
shrouded life ; consuming, if possible in silence, my 
considerable daily allotment of pain ; glad when any 
strength is left in me for writing, which is the only 

30 use I can see in myself, — too rare a case of late. The 
ground of my existence is black as death ; too black, 
when all void too ; but at times there paint themselves 



290 EMERSON. 

on it pictures of gold, and rainbow, and lightning ; all 
the brighter for the black ground, I suppose. Withal, 
I am very much of a fool." — No, not a fool, but turbid 
and morbid, wilful and perverse. '^ We judge of a 
man's wisdom by his hope." 5 

Carlyle's perverse attitude towards happiness cuts 
him off from hope. He fiercely attacks the desire for 
happiness ; his grand point in Sartor, his secret in 
which the soul may find rest, is that one shall cease to 
desire happiness, that one should learn to say to one- 10 
self : " What if thou wert born and predestined not to 
be happy, but to be unhappy ! " He is wrong ; Saint 
Augustine is the better philosopher, who says : " Act 
we 77iust in pursuance of what gives us most delight." 
Epictetus and Augustine can be severe moralists 15 
enough ; but both of them know and frankly say that 
the desire for happiness is the root and ground of 
man's being. Tell him and show him that he places 
his happiness wrong, that he seeks for delight where 
delight will never be really found ; tlien you illumine 20 
and further him. But you only confuse him by telling 
him to cease to desire happiness ; and you will not 
tell him this unless you are already confused yourself. 

Carlyle preached the dignity of labour, the necessity 
of righteousness, the love of veracity, the hatred of 25 
shams. He is said by many people to be a great 
teacher, a great helper for us, because he does so. 
But what is the due and eternal result of labour, right- 
eousness, veracity ? — Happiness. And how are we 
drawn to them by one who, instead of making us feel 30 
that with them is happiness, tells us that perhaps we 
were predestined not to be happy but to be unhappy ? 



EMERSON. 291 

You will find, in especial, many earnest preachers of 
our popular religion to be fervent in their praise and 
admiration of Carlyle. His insistence on labour, 
righteousness, and veracity, pleases them ; his con- 
5 tempt for happiness pleases them too. I read the 
other day a tract against smoking, although I do not 
happen to be a smoker myself. " Smoking," said the 
tract, " is liked because it gives agreeable sensations. 
Now it is a positive objection to a thing that it gives 
10 agreeable sensations. An earnest man will expressly 
avoid what gives agreeable sensations." Shortly after- 
wards I was inspecting a school, and I found the chil- 
dren reading a piece of poetry on the common theme 
that we are here to-day and gone to-morrow. I shall 
15 soon be gone, the speaker in this poem was made 
to say, — 

" And I shall be glad to go, 
For the world at best is a dreary place, 
And my life is getting low." 

20 How usual a language of popular religion that is, on 
our side of the Atlantic at any rate ! But then our 
popular religion, in disparaging happiness here below, 
knows very well what it is after. It has its eye on a 
happiness in a future life above the clouds, in the 

25 New Jerusalem, to be won by disliking and rejecting 
happiness here on earth. And so long as this ideal 
stands fast it is very well. But for very many it now 
stands fast, no longer ; for Carlyle, at any rate, it had 
failed and vanished. Happiness in labour, righteous- 

3oness, and veracity, — in the life of the spirit,— here was 
a gospel still for Carlyle to preach, and to help others 

l?y pre^Qhing. 3?i|t \\^ baffled them an4 Wm^df by 



292 EMERSON. 

preferring the paradox that we are not born for hap- 
piness at all. 

Happiness in labour, righteousness, and veracity ; 
in all the life of the spirit ; happiness and eternal 
hope ; — that was Emerson's gospel. I hear it said 5 
that Emerson was too sanguine ; that the actual gen- 
eration in America is not turning out so well as he ex- 
pected. Very likely he was too sanguine as to the 
near future ; in this country it is difficult not to be too 
sanguine. Very possibly the present generation may lo 
prove unworthy of his high hopes ; even several gen- 
erations succeeding this may prove unworthy of them. 
But by his conviction that in the life of the spirit is 
happiness, and by his hope that this life of the spirit 
will come more and more to be sanely understood, 15 
and to prevail, and to work for happiness, — by this 
conviction and hope Emerson was great, and he will 
surely prove in the end to have been right in them. 
In this country it is difficult, as I said, not to be san- 
guine. Very many of your writers are over-sanguine, 20 
and on the wrong grounds. But you have two men 
who in what they have written show tlieir sanguineness 
in a line where courage and hope are just, where they 
are also infinitely important, but where they are not 
easy. The two men are Franklin and Emerson.* 25 
These two are, I think, the most distinctively and 
honourably American of your writers ; they are the 
most original and the most valuable. Wise men 

' I found with pleasure that this conjunction of Emerson's 
name with Franklin's had already occurred to an accomplished 30 
writer and delightful man, a friend of Emerson, left almost the 



EMERSON. 293 

everywhere know that we must keep up our courage 
and hope ; they know that hope is, as Wordsworth 
well says, — 

" The paramount duty which Heaven lays, 
5 For its own honour, on man's suffering heart." 

But the very word duty points to an effort and a strug- 
gle to maintain our hope unbroken. Franklin and 
Emerson maintained theirs with a convincing ease, 
an inspiring joy. Franklin's confidence in the happi- 

10 ness with which industry, honesty, and economy will 
crown the life of this work-day world, is such that he 
runs over with felicity. With a like felicity does 
Emerson run over, when he contemplates the happi- 
ness eternally attached to the true life in the spirit. 

15 You cannot prize him too much, nor heed him too 
diligently. He has lessons for both the branches of 
our race. I figure him to my mind as visible upon 
earth still, as still standing here by Boston Bay, or at 
his own Concord, in his habit as he lived, but of 

20 sole survivor, alas ! of the famous literary generation of Boston, — 
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Dr. Holmes has kindly allowed 
me to print here the ingenious and interesting lines, hitherto un- 
published, in which he speaks of Emerson thus : — 

" Where in the realm of thought, whose air is song, 
25 Does he, the Buddha of the West, belong ? 

He seems a winged Franklin, sweetly wise, 
Born to unlock the secret of the skies ; 
And which the nobler calling — if 'tis fair 
Terrestrial with celestial to compare — 
30 To guide the storm-cloud's elemental flame, 

Or walk the chambers whence the lightning came 

Amidst the sources of its subtile fire, 

^nd steal their efflueiic? for his lips and lyre ? 



294 EMERSON. 

heightened stature and shining feature, with one hand 
stretched out towards the East, to our laden and 
labouring England; the other towards the ever-growing 
West, to his own dearly-loved America, — " great, intel- 
ligent, sensual, avaricious America," To us he shows 5 
for guidance his lucid freedom, his cheerfulness and 
hope ; to you his dignity, delicacy, serenity, elevation. 
— Discourses in America^ ed. 1896, pp. 138-207. 



NOTES. 

I. — The Fujictio)i of Criticism. This essay stands first 
in Arnold's Essays in Criticism: First Series (1865). It 
may be regarded as a "programme" of Arnold's subse- 
quent prose writing. It suggests nearly all the various 
uses to which he afterward turned criticism: his applica- 
tion of it to social conditions, to science, to philosophy, and 
to religion, as well as to literature. Properly read, it has 
also something to saj^ of the causes that gradually led 
Arnold away from poetry to prose. 

I : 4. — / said. See On Translating Homer, ed. 1883, 
p. 199- 

I : 20. — Mr. S/iairp's excellent notice. An essay on 
Wordsworth : The Man and the Poet, that appeared in 
the North British Review for August, 1864, vol. xli, 
" Mr. Shairp " was in 1865 Professor of Humanity at the 
United College in St. Andrews University, In 1868 he 
was made Principal of the College. In 1877 he became 
Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. He is 
best remembered by a series of lectures delivered at 
Oxford on Aspects of Poetry (1881). On the Poetic Inter- 
pretation of Nature had appeared in 1877. He died in 
1885. 

2:5. — Wordsworth, . . . in one of his letters. See 
Memoirs of William Wordsworth, ed, 1851, ii. 51. The 
passage occurs in a letter of 1816 to the Quaker poet, 
Bernard Barton (Lamb's friend and correspondent), who, 
on the appearance of the Excursion, had "addressed 
some verses to Wordsworth expressing his own admiration, 
unabated by the strictures of the reviewers." 

3 : 16. — Irenes. Johnson's play of Irene was produced 



296 NOTES. 

in 1749. " One of the heaviest and most unreadable o£ 
dramatic performances; interesting now, if interesting at 
all, solely as a curious example of the result of bestowing 
great powers upon a totally uncongenial task. . . The 
play was carried through nine nights by Garrick's friendly 
zeal, so that the author had his three nights' profits. . . 
When asked how he felt upon his ill-success, he replied : 
' Like the monument.' " Leslie Stephen's Johnson (Eng- 
lish Men of Letters Series), p. 36. 

3 • 17- — Lives of the Poets. In these Lives (1779-81) 
Johnson is at his best. His wide and accurate informa- 
tion, vigorous understanding, and strong common sense 
give his judgments permanent value, despite the limita- 
tions of the eighteenth-century horizon. 

3 : i().— Ecclesiastical Sonnets. This series of 132 son- 
nets (1821-22) deals with the history of the Church in 
England " from the introduction of Christianity " to " the 
present times." Despite Arnold's sneer, several of the 
sonnets— notably those on Cranme}' and on Walton's Book 
of Lives— SiVQ in Wordsworth's best manner. 

3 : 20, — Celebrated Preface. The allusion is to the 
Preface prefixed to the second edition (1800) of the Lyrical 
Ballads. Passages in the Preface remain among the most 
suggestive and memorable things that have been said of 
poetry. " Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all 
knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in 
the countenance of all science." . . "The remotest dis- 
coveries of the chemist, the botanist, or mineralogist will 
be as proper objects of the poet's art as any upon which it 
can be employed; if the time should ever come when these 
things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under 
which they are contemplated by the followers of these 
respective sciences shall be manifestly and palpably mate- 
rial to us as enjoying and suffering beings; if the time 
should ever come when what is now called science, thus 
familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, 
a form of flesh and blood, the poet will lend his divine 
spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the 



iVOTES. 297 

Being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the 
household of man," Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, 3d 
ed., London, 1802, pp. xxxvii and xxxix. 

3 : 23. — Goethe. The student should specially note the 
recurrence of Goethe's name throughout this " pro- 
gramme " of Arnold's critical work. Cf. l7itroductio7i, 
p. Ixxix. 

6:11. — Too abstract. Cf. Selections, p. 36, 1. 24, and 
Introduction, pp. xliii-xlix. 

8 : 20. — No 7iational glow of life afid thought. Cf. Kuno 
Francke's Social Forces in Germati Literature, p. 528. 
" There is a deep pathos in the fact that the principal 
character of the play with which Goethe in 1815 celebrated 
the final triumph of the German cause should have been a 
dim figure of Greek antiquity — Epimenides, the legendary 
sage who awakens from a sleep of long years to find himself 
alone among a people whose battles he has not fought, 
whose pangs he has not shared." 

10 : 13. — The old womajt. On July 23, 1637, the attempt 
was made in St. Giles's Church, Edinburgh, to read the 
new service prescribed by Charles I. for Scotland. A dan- 
gerous riot followed. According to tradition, the riot was 
started by one Jenny Geddes, who threw her stool at the 
Dean's head, crying out, "Villain, dost thou say mass at 
my lug! " The latest authorities regard Jenny as legend- 
ary. See Burton's History of Scotla7id (1873), vi. 150, 

12 : i.^foubert. See Pensees de f. Joubert, Paris, 
1869, i. 178. The sentence quoted is the second aphorism 
under Titre xv. — De la libertS, de la justice et des lois. 

12 : 31. — Bur he. For representative extracts from 
Burke's Reflections on the Revolutioji i7i Fra7ice, see Bliss 
Perry's Selections from Burke (1896), pp. 143-202. 

13 '' 23. — Dr. Price. Richard Price, D. D. (1723-91), 
long a preacher at various meeting-houses in Hackney, 
London, was one of the most prominent English advocates 
of the "Rights of Man." Because of his defense of the 
American revolutionists he was in 1788 invited by Congress 
to " come and reside among a people who knew how to 



298 NOTES. 

appreciate bis talents." From 1789 to 1791 he defended 
vigorously in England the new order of things in France. 

13 : 29. — " To party gave up." From Goldsmith's epi- 
taph (in Retaliation) on "good Edmund." 

15 : 6 — Lord Auckland. William Eden (1744-1814), was 
in 1785 Pitt's special envoy for the negotiation of an im- 
portant treaty with France. During the next few years 
he was of the utmost service to Pitt through his skillful 
conduct of many pieces of diplomatic business. He 
received a peerage as Baron Auckland in 1789. 

15 : 2d>.— Curiosity. Cf. what Arnold says, in 1867, on 
this same point in his lecture on Culture and its Enemies , 
a lecture that later became chap. i. of Ctilture and Ayiar- 
c/iy {i^^()). See Selections, pp. 147-148. 

19:15. — The Home and Foreigji Review. Published 
in London from 1862 to 1864. 

20 : 15. — Sir Charles Adder ley. A Conservative states- 
man, who held important offices in the Colonial and Edu- 
cational Departments, under Lord Derby, 1858-59 and 
1866-68. 

20 : 24. — Mr. Roebuck. Member for Sheffield and a 
t^^pical representative in 1865 of the advanced Liberal 
party. Cf. Selections, p. 173, 1. 9. 

21 : 4. — " Das We nig e." From Goethe's Iphigenie auf 
Tauris, 1. ii. 91-92. 

24: 2. — Detachment. For the Indian Buddhist, the per- 
fect life involves withdrawal from the world, " habitual 
silence," and severe "meditation." Cf. J. Barthelemy 
Saint-Hilaire's The Buddha and his Religion, translated 
by Laura Ensor, London, 1895, pp. 160-161. 

25 : 17. — Lord Somers (1650-1716), The great cham- 
pion of the English Constitution as determined by the 
Revolution of 1688. See the brilliant characterization of 
Somers in Macaulay's History of England, chap. xx. 

25:18. — Philistines, ^ee Selections B.n^ Notes, ^^p. 132 
and 139. 

25 : 18. — Cobbett. William Cobbett (1762-1835) v/as one 
of the most violent of English democratic agitators. He 



NOTES. 299 

was in America for a time, and from 1796 to 1801 published 
in Philadelphia Peter Po?'cupine's Gazette. On his re- 
turn to England he took back with him what was left of 
Tom Paine. He was Member of Parliament from 1832 
to 1835. For Heine's opinion of Cobbett see Selections, 
p. 142. Cobbett was continually producing newspaper 
articles and pamphlets, and was also author of many pre- 
tentious works. He wrote on a large variety of subjects : 
English grammar, European politics, English party poli- 
tics, economic problems, religion, the Reformation. A 
collected edition of some of his more permanently valuable 
writings on politics was issued in six volumes by his sons 
in 1835. In the Study of Celtic Literature {Selections, 
p. 92), Arnold speaks of " Cobbett's sinewy, idiomatic 
English." 

25 : 12).— Latter-Day Pamphlets. The first of these 
was published in February, 1S50. While admitting the 
inevitableness of Democracy, they attacked many popular 
democratic superstitions, and urged that all men devote 
themselves to honest work and give over cheap oratory 
and political agitations. 

25 : 24. — Mr. Ruskin. See, for example, Mr. Ruskin's 
Fors Clavigera. 

27 : 6. — Oberniann. See Senancour's Oberniami, ed. 
1863, Letter xc: — " L'homme est perissable. — II se peut ; 
mais perissons en resistant, et, si le neant nous est reserve, 
ne faisons pas que ce soit une justice." ' Man is doomed to 
perish. — It may be so ; but let us perish while resisting, and, 
if nothingness awaits us, let us ensure that it be not a just 
apportionment, * Arnold's writings contain many admiring 
allusions to Senancour (1770-1846). Oberniann (1S04) is the 
story of a dreamer of delicately romantic temperament, 
recited through a series of letters that are exquisite in 
phrase and in imaginative quality. Spiritual, philosophic, 
religious, and artistic problems come up for finely melan- 
choly moralizing, and there is much sensitive transcription 
from nature. Amiel seems to have been an attempt on 
the part of the world-order to realize Oberniann. 



3oO NO TES. 

27 : 10. — Bishop Coletiso. The first volume of his The 
Pentateuch ajtd Book of Joshua Critically Exajnined was 
published in 1862. It urged the "impossibility of regard- 
ing the Mosaic story as a true narrative of actual historical 
matters of fact." Arnold's essay on Colenso bore the title 
The Bishop and the Philosopher (the philosopher is 
Spinoza), and appeared in Macmillan's Magazine for 
January, 1863. Arnold found Colenso's book not spirit- 
ually edifying for the uninstructed, and too cheap in its 
scholarship and methods for people of real cultivation. 
Colenso was Bishop of Natal ; he died in 1883. 

28 : 2>.—/oubert. See Pens(^es de J. Joubert, ed. 1869, i. 
311, Titre xxiii., Des Qualites de Vecrivain. " L'ignor- 
ance, qui, en morale, attenue la faute, est, elle-meme, en 
litterature, une faute capitale." 

28 : 12. — Dr. Stanley. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean 
of Westminster. Cf. 274 : 25. The book in question is The 
Bible : Its Form and its Substajtce (1863). It admits the 
indefensibility of the theory of literal inspiration, but con- 
tends that in the study of the Scriptures " the main end to 
be sought is an increased acquaintance with the Bible, and 
increased appreciation of its instruction." 

28 : 23. — Eighty and odd pigeons. The allusion is to one 
of the mathematical problems by which Bishop Colenso 
would discredit the Pentateuch. Arnold's account in his 
Macniillan article of this particular problem is as follows : 
" If three priests have to eat 264 pigeons a day, how mafiy 
tnust each priest eat ? That disposes of Leviticus." 

29 : I. — A lady. Frances Power Cobbe (b. 1822). She 
has been very influential as a writer for periodicals, as a 
lecturer on social topics, as an advocate of women's rights, 
and of late years as an opponent of vivisection. She has 
written much on religion from the point of view of a theist 
and Unitarian. 

29 : 5. — M. Kenan's (1823-92) book was the famous Vie 
de Jesus (1863). Of Kenan's many works on Hebrew lit- 
erature the best known is the elaborate Histoire des 
Origines du Christianisme, of which the prefatory volume 



NOTES. joi 

was the Vze de Jesus. Later volumes were Les Apotres 
(1866), r^glise Chretien ;z^ ( 1 8 79) . 

29: II. — "■Has been given the strength." The quota- 
tion comes from p. 134 of Miss Cobbe's Broken Lights 
(1864), a book in which, as Matthew Arnold has just noted, 
she makes a general " survey of the religious state of 
Europe." 

29 : 20. — Dr. Strauss' s book. Strauss (1808-74) published 
his original Life of Jesus (" Das Leben Jesu, kritisch 
bearbeitet ") in 1835. His attempt was to account for the 
miraculous element in New Testament story as the product 
of the myth-making popular imagination working under the 
influence of the Messianic ideal. He published, in 1864, 
a popular edition of his " Leben Jesu," with the title " Das 
Leben Jesu ; fUr das Deutsche Volk bearbeitet." This is 
the book alluded to in the text. The earlier book, it may be 
noted, was translated into English by George Eliot in 1846. 

30:16. — Nemo doctus. See Cicero's Att., xv. 7: 
" Nemo doctus umquam (multa autem de hoc genere 
scripta sunt) mutationem consilii, inconstantiam dixit 
esse." 

30 : 20. — Coleridge's . . . phrase. See Coleridge's C071- 
fessions of aii hiquiring Spirit : " In my last letter I said 
that in the Bible there is more that finds me than I have 
experienced in all other books put together ; that the 
words of the Bible find me at greater depths of my being ; 
and that whatever finds me brings with it an irresistible 
evidence of its having proceeded from the Holy Spirit." 
Letter H. 

31 : 10. — Religious Duty. Published in 1864 ; a kind of 
Unitarian guide to spirituality and morality. 

33 : 31- — Bosstiefs philosophy of history. In his Dis- 
cours sur Vhistoire universelle (1681) Bossuet, though 
attaining something like a conception of the continuity of 
history, nevertheless explains the course of events as 
divinely directed in rather obviously providential ways for 
the benefit of Christianity in general and of the Roman 
Church in particular. Arnold's point is, of course, that 



305 NOTES. 

what was perhaps the most characteristic doctrine of the 
Reformation, " Lnther's theory of grace," is, when judged 
by philosophical standards, no more satisfactory as a piece 
of theorizing than Bossuet's attempt to expound all history 
as merely preparing the way for the ecclesiasticism of the 
age of Louis Quatorze. 

34 : I. — Bishop of Durham'' s. In 1865 the Bishop of 
Durham was Charles Baring, a prelate of whom nothing 
seems preserved beyond the historical fact of his prelacy. 

35 : 10, — Ab integro. From Vergil's Eclogues, iv. 5 ; 
best translated by a line from Shelley's Hellas, " The 
world's great age begins anew." 

1^0.— On Translating Homer. Matthew Arnold was 
made Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1857. He pub- 
lished, in 1858, Merope, a tragedy, in imitation of the 
Greek ; the preface expounded the theory of Greek 
tragedy. In i860 he began a special series of three lec- 
tures on translating Homer. In a letter dated October 29, 
i860, he writes : " I am in full work at my lecture on 
Homer, which you have seen advertised in the Times. 
I give it next Saturday. I shall try to lay down the true 
principles on which a translation of Homer should be 
founded, and I shall give a few passages translated by 
myself to add practice to theory. This is an off lecture, 
given partly because I have long had in my mind some- 
thing to say about Homer, partly because of the com- 
plaints that I did not enough lecture on poetry. I shall 
still give the lecture, continuing my proper course, toward 
the end of the term." Letters, i. 145-146. These lectures 
were published in t86i. The Selection, pp. 40-66, is the 
entire first lecture. 

40. — Ntinqiiamne reponam? See Juvenal's ^izZ/Vvi-, i. i : 

"Semper ego auditor tantum? Numquamne reponam 
Vexatus totiens rauci Theseide Cordi ? " 
' Shall I be always a hearer only ? Shall I be vexed so often by 
\^QTheseis of husky- voiced Cordus and never take revenge ? ' 

40 : 16. — Professor Newjnan. Francis W. Newman 
(b. 1805), brother of Cardinal Newman, studied at Oxford^,, 



NOTES. 303 

and, after various experiences as tutor and traveler, was, 
in 1846, made Professor of Latin in University College, 
London ; he resigned this position in 1863, His translation 
of the Iliad was published in 1856. Professor Newman 
has written essays and treatises on a wide range of subjects 
from theology and elementary geometry to Arabic. His 
scholarship is universally admitted ; his poetic accomplish- 
ments may be judged from the following extract from his 
Iliad: 

" Achilles, image of the gods ! thy proper sire remember, 

Who on the deadly steps of Eld far on like me is carried. 

And haply him the dwellers-round with many an outrage harry, 

Nor standeth any by his side to ward annoy and ruin. 

Yet doth he verily, I wis, while thee alive he learneth 

Joy in his soul, and every day the hope within him cherish, 

His loved offspring to behold, returned from land of Troas." 

—Iliad., xxiv. 486-492. 

The measure is the septenarius, with feminine ending — 
/'. e. , the seven-foot Iambic line, ending with an unaccented 
extra syllable. There is no rhyme. Chapman in his 
translation of Homer uses rhyming seven-foot Iambic 
lines, ending in an accented syllable. 

40 : 17. — Mr. Wright, See " The Iliad of Homer, 
translated into blank verse, by I. C. Wright, M. A., trans- 
lator of Dante; late Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford." 
London, 1861. 

41 : 14. — Mr. Newman declares. The passage occurs in 
the preface to Newman's Iliad. 

43 ' 13. — Bentley. See J. H. Monk's Life of Bentley, 
London, 1830, p. 626: " The common story of his having 
told Pope, whom he met at Bishop Atterbury's table 
shortly after the publication of his translation of the Iliad, 
' that it was a very pretty poem, but that he must not call 
it Homer,' is told in different forms; and its truth is very 
probable, from his having himself, when a.sked in his latter 
days what had been the cause of Pope's dislike, replied: 
* I talked against his Homer; and the portentous cut) 
npYPV forgives,' " 



304 v\'(? TES. 

43 : 17. — 'fis Aj/o (ppdvLfxos bplceiev. This famous definition 
of the standard of excellence in an art comes from Aristotle's 
NichomachcEan Ethics, II., vi. 15. 

45 : 24. — Voss. The translation of the Odyssey was pub- 
lished in 1 781; that of the Iliad, with the revised Odyssey, 
in 1793. 

46 : 15. — Article on English translations of Homer. See 
the National Review for October, i860, vol. xi. p. 283. 

47 : 3. The most delicate of living critics. Of course, 
Sainte-Beuve. Cf. Arnold's Letters, i. 155, where he 
calls Sainte-Beuve " the first of living critics." 

48 : 6. — Cowper. His Homer v^^s published in 1791; a 
revised edition with many alterations appeared in 1802, 
after his death. 

48 : ^.—Mr. Sotheby. William Sotheby's (1757-1833) 
translation of the Iliad into heroic couplets was published 
ini83i; the Iliad and the Odyssey, with seventy-five de- 
signs by John Flaxman, were published in 1834. 

48 : II. — Chapma7i. Parts of the Iliad appeared in 1598; 
the entire Iliad about 161 1; half the Odyssey in 1614; the 
Iliad and the Odyssey together in 16 16. His measure, 
as already noted, is the septenarius, with masculine end- 
ing; the verses rhyme in couplets. The measure had been 
largely used in ballads. Cf. 60 : 10. 

51 : 23. — Our pre-Raphaelite school. See Mr. Ruskin's 
Lectures on Architecture a?id Painting, Lecture IV., 
Pre-Raphaelitis)n: " Pre-Raphaelitism has but one prin- 
ciple — that of absolute, uncompromising truth in all that it 
does, obtained by working everything, down to the most 
minute detail, from nature, and from nature only. Every 
pre-Raphaelite landscape background is painted to the last 
touch, in the open air, from the thing itself. Every pre- 
Raphaelite figure, however studied in expression, is a true 
portrait of some living person. Every minute accessory is 
painted in the same manner. . . The habit of constantly 
carrying everything up to the utmost point of completion 
deadens the pre-Raphaelites in general to the merits of 
nien who, with an equal love of truth up to a certain point, 



jVO tes. 305 

yet express themselves habitually with speed and power, 
rather than with finish, and give abstracts of truth rather 
than total truth." Further discussions of pre-Raphael- 
itism may be found in Robert de la Sizeranne's La Pei?t- 
ture Anglaise Contemporazne {Psivis, 1895), Harry Quilter's 
Preferences in Art, Knight's Life of Rossetti, Sharp's Life 
of Rossetti, William Bell Scott's Rejninisceftccs, and in an 
article of F. G. Stephen's in the Portfolio, 1894. 

54:10 — Robert IVood (lyit-yi). He traveled widely 
in the Orient in the interests of history and archaeology, 
and published two famous illustrated works on Eastern 
antiquities : T/ie Ruins of Palmyra, 1753 ; The Ruins of 
Balbec, 1757. He was called Palmyra Wood ; cf. Athen- 
ian Stewart. 

57 : 6. — R asset as. In R asset as. Prince of Abyssinia 
(1759), the Latinized style of Johnson and his trifoliate 
sentence structure is luxuriantly developed. The dia- 
logues as well as the author's own moralizings are all in 
polysyllables and periodic sentences. "The little fishes 
talk like whales." 

58 : 20. — " With his eye on the objects The phrase first 
occurs in a letter of 1805 to Scott, who was planning an 
edition of Dryden. See Memoirs of Williain Wordsworth, 
by Christopher Wordsworth (ed. Boston, 1851), i. 317. 
" Dryden had neither a tender heart nor a loft}^ sense of 
moral dignity. Whenever his language is poetically im- 
passioned, it is mostly upon unpleasing subjects, such as 
the follies, vices, and crimes of classes of men, or of indi- 
viduals. That his cannot be the language of imagination 
must have necessarily followed from this ; that there is 
not a single image from nature in the whole body of 
his works ; and in his translation from Virgil, when- 
ever Virgil can be fairly said to have his eye upon his 
object, Dryden always spoils the passage." See also 
in Wordsworth's Essay, Supple^nentary to the Preface 
(1815), his famous comment on the artificiality of the 
eighteenth-century treatment of nature : " Excepting the 
nocturnal Reverie of Lady Winchelsea, and a passage or 



3o6 2VOTES. 

two in the Windsor Forest of Pope, the poetry of the period 
intervening between the publication of the Paradise Lost 
and the Sea,sons does not contain a single new image of 
external nature, and scarcely presents a familiar one from 
which it can be inferred that the eye of the Poet had been 
steadily fixed upon his object." Wordsworth's Poetical 
WoT-ks, ed. John Morley, 1890, p. 870. 

59: 17. — Four teeii-sy liable line. Cf. 40: 16 and 48 : 11. 

60 : 10. — Keats' s fine sonnet. 

" Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, 
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen ; 
Round many "Western islands have I been 

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne : 
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold. 

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken ; 

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
He stared at the Pacific— and all his men 

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise- 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien." 

Mr. Swinburne's praise of this sonnet should not be for- 
gotten : " While anything of English poetry shall endure 
the sonnet of Keats will be the final word of comment, the 
final note of verdict on Chapman's Homer." Chapman's 
Works (ed. London, 1875), vol. ii. p. Ivii. 

60 : 13. — Coleridge. See his Miscellanies, ^Esthetic 
and Literary, ed. 1885, p. 289, Chapman's Homer: "It 
is as truly an original poem as the Faery Queene ; — it wnll 
give you small idea of Homer, though a far truer one than 
Pope's epigrams, or Cowper's cumbersome most anti-Ho- 
meric Miltonism. For Chapman writes and feels as a 
poet — as Homer might have written had he lived in Eng- 
land in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In short, it is an 
exquisite poem, in spite of its frequent and perverse quaint- 
nesses and harshnesses, which are, however, amply repaid 
by almost unexampled sweetness and beauty of language, 
fiU over Spirit and feeling." 



NOTES. 307 

60: \S'—Mr. Hall am. See his Literature of Europe 
(ed. New York, 1874), ii. 226. 

60 : IT.— Its latest editor. The allusion is to Rev. Rich- 
ard Hooper's edition of Chapman's Homer, London, 1857. 

621 10.— '' Clearest-souled.'' From Arnold's sonnet To 
a Friend : Poems, ed. 1878, p. 2. 

62 : 12.— Voltaire. He stands here as typical of modern 
illumination and rationalism. 

62: 14. — '■'■Somewhat as one might imagitie.'''' These 
words occur toward the close of Pope's Preface to his 
translation of the Iliad. 

62 : 22. — As Chapman says it. See the Commentaries 
at the end of book i. of Chapman's Iliad; Chapman's 
Works, ed. R. H. Shepherd, London, 1874-75, iii- 25. 

66. — Philology and Literature. As regards the general 
significance of Arnold's distrust of philology, see Introduc- 
tion, pages xxvii and xlv. 

66 : 5. — To give relief. Cf. the preface to Cowper's 
Homer, p. xv : "It is difficult to kill a sheep with dignity in 
a modern language, to flay and to prepare it for the table, 
detailing every circumstance of the process. . . Homer, 
who writes always to the eye, with all his sublimity and 
grandeur, has the minuteness of a Flemish painter." 

67 : I. — Mr. Newman. In 1861 Professor Newman (cf. 
40 : 16) published Homeric Translation iti Theory and 
Practice. A Reply to Mattheiv Arnold, Esq., Professor 
of Poetry at Oxford. In answer to this Reply Arnold 
delivered one or two additional lectures on translating 
Homer which, for the most part, had to do with Newman's 
arguments, but which also carried out suggestively some 
new lines of thought. His important discussion of Eng- 
lish Hexameters occurs in these Last Words. The pres- 
ent Selection comes from the early part of these additional 
lectures, which, with the title Last Words, are printed at 
the end of the original three lectures. 

68 : 13. — See Montaigne's Essais, livre II., chap, x., 
Des Livres : " Plutarque est plus uniforrae et constant ; 
Seneque, plus ondoyant et divers." 



3o8 NOTES. 

71:14. — "All thy blessed youth.'" See Measure for 
Measure, III. i. 36. 

74 : 7. — Homer seemed to Sophocles. As regards the 
date of the Homeric poems, "the view that the poems 
were essentially in their present condition before the 
historical period in Greece began, early in the eighth 
century b. c, is moderate." Sophocles lived from 495 to 
406 B. c. 

74 : 28. — Pericles (495-429 B. C). The statesman who 
ruled in Athens during the period of its greatest artistic 
glory. 

77 : 3. — And this is what he knows ! The climax is cer- 
tainly effective. The reader should note the rhetorical 
ingenuity with which Professor Newman's incompetence 
is thrown into relief. Cf. the last sentence of this 
Selection, p. 82 : " Terrible learning, — I cannot help in 
my turn exclaiming, — terrible learning, which discovers so 
much ! " 

79 : 20. — Buttnian, Mr. Maiden, and M. Benfey. 
Three well-known Greek scholars. Buttmann (i 764-1 829) 
was librarian of the Royal Library at Berlin and the 
author of various Greek grammars. Mr. Maiden (b. 1800) 
long held the chair of Greek in University College, 
London. Theodor Benfey (b. 1809) was the author of 
a Dictionary of Greek Roots (1839). 

81 : 5. — Milton's words. See Lycidas, 1. 124. 

81 : 23, — The father in Sheridan's play. See Sheridan's 
The Critic, IL ii : 

Governor : " No more ; I would not have thee plead in vain : 
The father softens— but the governor 
Is fix'd ! " 

81 : 26. — Professor Max Midler. Corpus Professor of 
Comparative Philology and Fellow of All Souls College 
in the University of Oxford. His best known works are 
Lectures on the Science of Language (1859), 3.nd Chips 
fro7n a German Workshop (1868-75). 

83 : 15. — Bonum est. From the 



NOTES. 309 

xvii. 4. The disciples are on the mount of transfigura- 
tion ; Peter exclaims, " Lord, it is good for us to be here." 
Arnold, in his Letters (i. 191), notes the fact that, when 
quoting from the Bible, he always uses the Vulgate Latin, 
in case he is " not earnestly serious." 

83 : 22,—Morieminiinpeccatis vestris. From the Vul- 
gate, John viii. 24. 

84 : I. — " Standing on earth."'' From Milton's Paradise 
Lost, bk. vii. 23-26. 

84 : 13. — Definition. As regards Arnold's distrust of 
definitions and of all abstract discussions of literature, see 
Introduction, p. xliii. ff. 

84 : 22. — Bedeute7ides. This word in the sense of note- 
worthy, or chargedwith significance, was a special favorite 
with Goethe, by whom it was really made current. See 
the very long list of quotations from Goethe in the Grimms' 
Deutsches Worterbuch, under bedeutend. 

85 : 5. — Otte poet. Shakespeare. Cf. the essay, A 
French Critic on Milton in Mixed Essays, p. 200: "Shakes- 
peare himself, divine as are his gifts, has not, of the marks 
of the master, this one : perfect sureness of hand in his 
style." Cf. also Essays in Criticism, ii. 135: "Shakes- 
peare frequently has lines and passages in a strain quite 
false, and which are entirely unworthy of him. But one 
can imagine his smiling if one could meet him in the 
Elysian Fields and tell him so ; smiling and replying that 
he knew it perfectly well himself, and what did it matter ? " 

87 : 4. — Young. His Complaint or Night Thoughts on 
" Life, Death, and Immortality," was published in 1742-45. 

87 : 8. — aiwj/ da-<pa\T]s. See Pindar's Pythian Odes, iii. 
11. 153-161. 

88 : 7. — Celtic source. Arnold delivered a series of lec- 
tures at Oxford in 1865-66, on the Study of Celtic Literature. 
These lectures were published in the Cornhill Magazine 
during the first half of 1866, and issued as a book in 1867. 
They are specially interesting as an attempt on Arnold's 
part to apply the historical method for the explanation of 
the characteristics of English literature. Arnold describes 



310 NOTES. 

the typical Celt, Teuton, and Norman, and accounts for the 
typical Englishman as the resultant of these types. English 
literature he finds to be the direct imaginative expression of 
the various mental and moral qualities derived from these 
widely dissimilar sources. Despite, however, his nominal 
acceptance of the scientific and historical point of view, 
Arnold's method is largely one of divination and intuition, 
and his accounts of the various original types seem not to 
have been founded on any thorough study of early docu- 
ments or historical facts. His philological mistakes, he has 
in several cases admitted in his notes. Notwithstanding 
such shortcomings this work of Arnold's has been influential 
in popularizing the view that accounts for literature scien- 
tifically as an expression of national characteristics. 
Taine's Histoire de la litterattire anglaise had appeared 
in 1864. When Arnold wrote, Taine's book was — and 
indeed it long remained— the most considerable attempt 
to explain an entire national literature scientifically in 
terms of national life. 

89 : 7. — Nor sometimes forget. See Milton's Paradise 
Lost, iii. 11. 32-35- 

89 : 12. — Es bildet ein Talent. See Goethe's Tasso, 
I. ii. 

90 : 2. — Menander (ca. 340-ca. 290 B. C). He was the 
foremost representative of the " New Comedy " in Greece. 
He kept close in his art to real life and portrayed it with 
great truth and subtlety. Of preceding dramatists Eurip- 
ides most influenced him. "O Life and Menander," ex- 
claimed the Grammarian Aristophanes, " which of you two 
imitated the other ? " For an excellent contrast between 
the Old and the New Comedy, see Coleridge's Lectures on 
Skakspere, ed. 1890, p. 191. See also Mr. Churton Col- 
lins's Essays and Studies (London, 1895) ^.nd Mr George 
Meredith's The Comic Spirit (London, 1897). 

91:31. — Gemeinheit. 'Commonness, mediocity.' Cf. 
138 : 9. 

92 : II. — Cobbetfs sineivy . . . English. Cf. 25 : 18. 

92 : 15. — Bossuet (1627-1704). The famous Bishop of 



NOTES. 311 

Meaux, called because of his eloquence the " Eagle of 
Meaux." Cf, Arnold's translation {Essays, i. 295) of Jou- 
bert's characterization of Bossuet's style : " Bossuet em- 
ploys all our idioms, as Homer employed all the dialects. 
The language of kings, of statesmen, and of warriors ; 
the language of the people and of the student, of the coun- 
try and of the schools, of the sanctuary and of the courts 
of law ; the old and the new, the trivial and the stately, 
the quiet and the resounding, — he turns all to his use ; 
and out of all this he makes a style, simple, grave, majes- 
tic. His ideas are, like his words, varied, — common and 
sublime together. Times and doctrines in all their multi- 
tude were ever before his spirit, as things and words in all 
their multitude were ever before it. He is not so much a 
man as a human nature, with the temperance of a saint, 
the justice of a bishop, the prudence of a doctor, and the 
might of a great spirit." 

92: 15. — Bolmgbroke. Henry St. John (1678-1751), 
Viscount Bolingbroke, the famous Tory statesman of the 
time of Queen Anne. He was a distinguished patron of 
literature, an intimate friend of Pope's, who addresses him 
in the opening lines of the Epistle on Man, and a versa- 
tile writer on political, historical, and pseudo-philosophical 
topics. His written style is conspicuous for its easy 
strength, its well-bred colloquialism, and its union of ad- 
roitness with apparent negligence. Of his style as an ora- 
tor, Arnold speaks incidentally in his Celtic Literature : 
" Stafford, Bolingbroke, the two Pitts, Fox, — to cite no 
other names, — I imagine few will dispute that these 
call up the notion of an oratory, in kind, in extent, in 
power, coming nearer than any other body of modern 
oratory to the oratory of Greece and Rome." Celtic Lit- 
erature, p. 89. 

93 ; 22. — Rhyme. At present, scholars are pretty well 
agreed that rhyme " comes into our poetry " from Proven- 
gal verse and the lyrics of the " Norman minstrels." See 
Gummere's Hajidbook of Poetics, 153-154. Cf. Schipper's 
En g Use he Metrik, i. 30-38. 



312 NOTES. 

94 : 5. — Gwydi07i. See Math the son of Mathonivy in 
Lady Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion, ed. 1849, iii. 239. 

94 : 20. — Olwen. See Kilhwch and Olwen, as above, 
ii. 275. 

94 : 28. — Perednr. See Peredtir the Son of Evrawc, as 
above, i. 324. 

95 '" 13- — Geraint ajid E?izd. See Geraint the Son of 
Erbm, as above, ii. 112. 

96: 26. — In diesen Dzchttingen, etc. 'These poems are 
full of a weird moodiness, and show a marvelous sympa- 
thy with nature, especially with plants and stones. The 
reader feels as if he were in a magic forest ; he hears hid- 
den springs musically purling ; mystical wild flowers 
gaze at him with strange wistful eyes ; invisible lips kiss 
his cheeks with teasing tenderness ; great funguses, 
like golden bells, spring up musically at the foot of the 
trees.' 

97 : 2. — Shakspeare's . . . daffodil . See Perdita's 
speech in Winter's Tale, IV. iv. : 

" Daffodils 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty." 

Cf. Selections, p. 103. 

97 : 3. — Wordsworth's . . . cuckoo. The allusion is 
probably to the famous stanza in the Solitary Reaper : 

" A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard 
In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird. 
Breaking the silence of the seas 
Among the farthest Hebrides." 

The Poetical Works of Wordsworth, ed. John Morley, 
p. 192. Cf. Selectiojis, p. 103. 

Possibly, however, Arnold has in mind the poem To the 
Cuckoo; two of its most "magical" stanzas run as 
follows : — 

" Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring ! 
Even yet thou art to me 
No bird, but an invisible thing, 
A voice, a mystery ; 



NOTES. 313 

•' And I can listen to thee yet 
Can lie upon the plain 
And listen, till I do beget 
That golden time again." 

— Ibid.^ p. 204. 

97:3. — Keats' s . . . Autiomi. See the well-known ode, 
beginning : 

" Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness ! " 

97 : 4. — Oberma7t?i's . . . birch-tree. See Selections, 
p. 103, and for Senancour, see 27 : 6. 

97 : ^.—Easter-daisy. The last paragraphs of Senan- 
cour's Oberma7tn describe very tenderly and imaginatively 
the violet and the Easter-daisy, — la hdtive pdquerette. 

97 : 15. — Four of them. This classification of Arnold's 
is characteristically based on no principle. See the Intro- 
ductio7i, p. xlix. 

98 : 5. — As iuhe7t the i)W07i. From Pope's Iliad, bk. 
viii. 11. 687 ff. 

98 : 9. — Ma7ius herou7n. See Propertius's Elegies, xx. 
11. 21-22. 

•' Hie manus heroum, placidis ut constitit oris, 
Mollia composita litora fronde tegit." 

' Here the band of heroes, when they had set foot on the peaceful 
shores, covered the pleasant beach with well-woven leaves and 
branches.' 

98 : 11. — The lijie of Theocritus. See Theocritus' Idyls, 
13 : 34 : ' For a great mead lay before them, rich with 
rushes for beds.' The reading at present accepted gives 
fKeiTo, fx^ya-ior ^Keiro fiiyas ; in this case, of course, /x^ya 
modifies 6v€iap. 

98 : 19. — IVhat little tow7i. See Keats's Ode on a 
Grecia7i Ur7i. 

99 : 19. — White ha'wthor7i. This quotation and the fol- 
lowing one are from Keats's Ode to a Nighti7igale. 

100 : 4. — Muscosi fo7ites. Vergil's Eclogues, vii. 45, 
100 : 6. — Pallentes violas. Ibid. , ii. 47-48 : ' For thee the 

fair Naiad plucks pale violets and the tallest poppies and 



314 NOTES. 

daintily interweaves with them the narcissus and the 
flower of the fragrant dill.' 

100:9. — Caiia legain. Ibid., 11. 51-52: 'I myself wdll 
pluck quinces, white with tender down, and chest- 
nuts.' 

100 : 13. — I know a bank. Midsiunmer Nighfs Dj-eavi, 
II. I. 

100 : 19. — Look Jww the fioor. The Merchant of Venice, 
V. i. 

100 : 26. — Met we on hill. Midsumjner Nighfs Dream, 
II. I. 

loi : 2. — The moon shi?tes bright. The Merchant of 
Venice, I. i. 

103 : 3. — Daffodils. See 97 : 2. 

103 : 7. — Voice . . . heard. See 97 : 3. 

103 : 12. — Moving waters. See Keats's Last Sonnet. 
Arnold misquotes ; for " cold " read "pure." 

103 : 15. — Mountain birch-tree. Cf. 27 : 6 and 97 : 4. 
The quotation may be found in Senancour's Obermajin, 
ed. Paris, 1863, p. 72. 

104 : I. — Literature and Science. This is one of the 
three lectures that Arnold gave repeatedly during his visit 
to America in 1883-84. It was " originally given as the 
Rede Lecture at Cambridge [England], was recast for de- 
livery in America, and is reprinted here as so recast." 
See the preface to Discourses i7t America. The lecture is 
a temperate but comprehensive and vigorous plea for the 
humanities in education ; to many believers in " the 
classics " its arguments seem still unanswered. The student 
should note particularly its easy conversational tone, and 
its method of " winding into a subject," its concreteness and 
close adherence to life, its pleasant use of illustrations, its 
delicately venomous irony, its mocking repetition of catch- 
words and quotations, and its fine sanity and sublimated 
worldly wisdom ; in all these respects it is a thoroughly 
characteristic piece of Arnold's prose at its best. Arnold 
himself rated his Discourses in A77ierica very high ; he 
declared it to be " the book by which, of all his prose- 



NOTES. y^^ 

writings, he should most wish to be remembered," 
Letters, ii. 327, note. 

Many of the ideas of Literature and Sciejice are to be 
found in Eqicality, an "Address delivered at the Ro3''al 
Institution " in 1878, now the second essay in Mixed 
Essays. A comparison between Equality and Literature 
and Science might prove a suggestive study of literary 
methods. The style in Equality is much severer, the tone 
less playfully colloquial, and the treatment less desultory. 

108 : 19. — To know the best. See Selectiojis, pp. 15-16, 
25-26, 35-37. 

io8 : 22. — In a discourse. See T. H. Huxley's Science 
ajid Culture and Other Essays, Macmillan, 1881. The ad- 
dress in question was delivered October i, 1880. 

no : 2. — M. Renan talks. See, for example, an article 
on E Instruction superieur en France in Renan's Ques- 
tions Contemporaines, Paris, 1868, pp. 94-96, and loo-ioi. 
Cf. 226 ; 4. 

118:5. — Diotima . . . once explained. ^eQth.Q Sympos- 
ium; ^owetfs The Dialogues of Plato, i. 451, etc. 

119 : 4. — Professor Sylvester. A distinguished English 
mathematician ; at the date of Arnold's lecture, 1883, he 
had just completed seven years' service as a professor in 
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. 

119 : 2g.—Mr. Darwin's famous proposition. See Dar- 
win's Descent of Man, Part H. chap. xxi. 

121 : 10. — Mr. Darwin Oftce owned. A passage in which 
Darwin comments on his " curious and lamentable loss of 
the higher aesthetic tastes " is to be found in his Life and 
Letters, London, 1887, i. loo-ioi. 

121 : 26. — Sandema7iian. The sect of the Glassites or 
Sandemanians originated in Scotland about 1725; it still 
exists, and numbers about 2000 members. Among those 
of its practices or doctrines that go somewhat incongru- 
ously with scientific opinions are its use of the kiss of 
peace of the primitive Christians and its belief in the effi- 
cacy of casting lots for divine guidance. 

129 : 8. — Lady fane Grey. Roger Ascham has left in his 



3l6 NOTES. 

Scholemaster a delightful account of an interview with 
this charming girl-pedant: " Before I went into GerjJtanie, 
I came to Brodegate in Leicestershire, to take my leave of 
that noble Ladie Jane Grey, to whom I was exceding 
moch beholdinge. Hir parentes, the Duke and Duches, 
with all the houshold, Gentlemen and Gentlewomen, 
were huntinge in the Parke: I founde her, in her Chamber, 
readinge Phaedon Plato7iis in Greeke, and that with as 
moch delite, as som jentlemen wold read a merie tale in 
Bocase. After salutation, and dewtie done, with some other 
taulke, I asked hir, whie she wold leese soch pastime in the 
Parke ? smiling she answered me: I wisse, all their sporte 
in the Parke is but a shadoe to that pleasure, that 1 find in 
Plato : Alas good folke, they never felt, what trewe pleas- 
ure ment." Ascham's Scholemaster, Arber's ed., 46-47. 
132 : 24. — Mr. Wright. See 40 : 17. 

134 : 2. — The young lions. According to Arnold, the 
Dally Telegraph (the London morning journal circulating 
most widely among the English middle classes), fostered 
many of the worst tendencies in the British public; 
their love of cheap, patriotic bluster; their fondness for 
tinsel and claptrap in literary style ; in short, all the lit- 
erary and moral vulgarities of Philistinism. Leo Adoles- 
cens or Young Leo is Arnold's favorite nickname for the 
typical newswriter of the Daily Telegraph. Leo figures 
frequently in Friendship's Garlaiid ; one of his letters is 
given in the Selections, pp. 250-255. Cf. Selections, p. 145 
and p. 166. 

135 J 19. — Benthamisjn. The doctrine in its ethical sig- 
nificance is popularly expounded in John Stuart Mill's 
essay on Utiliiarianism, in his Dissertations and Dis- 
ciissio7ts, vol. iii. Bentham limits all knowledge to 
phenomena, denies free-will, and makes virtue coin- 
cident with action for the greatest happiness of the 
greatest number. Benthamism is used here by Arnold as 
a general synonym for materialism, and stands for any 
system of belief that opposes itself directly to a religious 
or transcendental conception of the universe. 



NOTES. 317 

136 : 15, — II 7ty a pas d'honwie 7iecessaire. In Fenelon's 
Telemaqiie, bk. xiii., an account is given of the process by 
which an intriguing man of affairs may render himself 
necessary to his prince. It may have been partly with 
reference to this classical passage that Chateaubriand said : 
"Je ne me crois pas un homme necessaire, et je pense 
qu'il n'y a pas plus d'hommes necessaires aujourd'hui." 
The exact phrase in the text is usually ascribed to Napo- 
leon. 

137 '- 3- — Exeter Hall. The favorite place in London 
for large sectarian meetings. 

137 • 4- — Marylebone Vestry. "The poor law, and 
management of the paving, cleansing, and lighting are 
still in the hands of the inhabitants of the parishes, or 
unions of parishes, or districts of them, and their repre- 
sentatives. The most important of these assemblies are 
the vestries of Marylebone and St. Pancras." Bohn'sZ^;/- 
don, 1854, p. 99. The Church of Marylebone is in a popu- 
lous district in the northwest of London ; a well-to-do 
tradesman might naturally belong to the vestry and be 
vaingloriously busy with the details of local administra- 
tion. Cf. Selections, p. 171, 1. 8. 

137 : 6. — His great dissected master. Jeremy Bentham 
(d. 1832) left his body to be dissected in the interests of 
science ; his skeleton is preserved in the museum of Uni- 
versity College, London. 

137 • 19- — Otcr you7ig barbarians. A humorous adapta- 
tion of a line from Byron's description of the Dying 
Gladiator in Childe Harold's Pilgri?nage, canto iv. 
stanza cxli. 

iZT '- '^1-— Tubingen. F. C. Baur, who was made Pro- 
fessor of Theology in Tubingen in 1826, is regarded as the 
founder of the so-called '• Tiibingen school." The work of 
the school was the scientific interpretation of the Gospels 
and Epistles with the view of determining the various con- 
flicting conceptions of Jesus' character and mission that 
they embody and of fixing the historical relations of these 
conceptions. Baur laid special stress on the conflict be- 



3iS NOTES. 

tween Petrinism and Paulism. In Arnold's mind, Tubin- 
gen stands for all that is characteristically scientific in the 
treatment of theological and religious questions. In God 
and the Bible (1875) Arnold has much to say of Baur and 
the Tiibingen school, e. g., on pp. 198 and 232. 

138 : 5. — Goethe . . . on the death of Schiller. See Goe- 
the's Epilog :j2t Schillers Glocke in Goethe's We^'ke (ed. 
Stuttgart, 1867), XV. 360 : 

" Indessen schritt sein Geist gewaltig fort 
Ins Ewige des Wahren, Guteii, Schonen, 
Und hinter ihm, in Vv^esenlosen Scheine, 
Lag, was uns alie bandigt, das Gemeine." 

' Meanwhile his spirit fared bravely on into the realms 
where eternally abide the True, the Good, the Beautiful; 
and behind him, — a mere shadowy illusion, — lay that 
which holds us all in bondage, — the petty world of 
custom.' 

139 : I. — Philistinism. In German student slang a Phil- 
iste?' is anyone outside of the student class and hostile to 
it — particularly perhaps a man to whom money is owed, a 
proprietor of rooms, or a smug tradesman. More broadly, 
the term is applied to foes of the children of light, to ene- 
mies of ideas and art, to those who are slaves to the petty 
routine of " use and wont," to men who have no interest 
beyond the "main chance." An early instance of the 
word in this sense occurs in Goethe's Satyros (1773), in the 
opening monologue of Einsiedler. The crude Philistine is 
described as looking on the sprouting buds and plants of 
the new year, and thinking simply and solely of the crops 
that they promise to him and his kin. Heine has probably 
done more than any other German writer to make the 
word Philistine known outside of Germany. An instance 
of his use of it may be found in the first chapter of the 
Reisebilder, ii., Italien (1828-29). In England Carlyle uses 
the word as early as 1827 in his essay on the State of Ger- 
maji Literatti7'e ; Essays, London, 1872, i. 58. He explains 
the term as the nickname bestowed on the partisans of the 



NOTES. 319 

Aufidrimg or Rationalistic movement during the latter 
part of the eighteenth century, by those who refused to 
find in Rationalism and Utilitarianism the complete phi- 
losophy of life. Again, in 1831, Carlyle uses the term, in 
his review of William Taylor's Historic Survey of Gertnan 
Poetry. After describing Taylor's character Carlyle adds: 
" To a German we might have compressed all this long 
description into a single word. Mr. Taylor is what they 
call a Philister; every fiber of him is Philistine. With us 
such men usually take into politics and become Code- 
makers and Utilitarians." Carlyle's Essays, ed. London, 
1872, iii. 241. Thackeray's Student Quarter, dealing with 
Paris in 1839-40, speaks of the Philister and the German 
Bursch, as contrasted types. In an essay on Macaulay, 
whom, it may be noted, Arnold once called " the great 
Apostle of the Philistines" (Arnold's Essays in Criticism, 
i. 304), Mr. Leslie Stephen comments as follows on the 
term Philistine: It is a " word which I understand prop- 
erly to denote indifference to the higher intellectual inter- 
ests. The word may also be defined, however, as the 
name applied by prigs to the rest of their species, . . 
There is much that is good in your Philistine." Leslie 
Stephen's Hours in a Library, iii. 306. For Arnold's 
account of the *'good " in Philistinism, see Selections, pp. 

233-234- 

139 • 3- — Soli. A place on the northeast shore of the 
Mediterranean, just north from Cyprus. The bad Greek 
spoken there was proverbial and originated the name 
solecism for any incorrectness of speech. 

139 : 16. — Respectability. In the report of a trial in some 
English court a witness characterized the defendant as 
a respectable man. When asked what he meant by 
respectable, he explained that the man in question " kept 
a gig." Carlyle seized upon this naive definition and wove 
from it the numerous phrases about " gigmanity, " "re- 
spectability with its thousand gigs," and so on, that abound 
in his writings. 

140 : 15. — " The French, . . . are the chosen people,'' 



32 o NOTES. 

These are the closing words of Heine's Englische Frag- 
inenie. See Heine's Werke, ed. Stuttgart, vi. 252. 

140 : 27. — ' ' I might settle in England^ Two of Heine's 
most amusing attacks on the English character are the 
chapter called John Bull in the Englische Fragmente, 
and chap. xlix. of Lutetia, Heine's Werke, ed. Stuttgart, 
xii. 36 ff. 

141 : 5. — The rule of thumb. See Heine's Englische 
Fragmente, chap. xiii. Die Befreiiing, and cf. John 
Morley's On Compromise. 

142 : 8. — Cobbett. See 25 : 18. The passage that Ar- 
nold translates is taken from chap. ix. of the Eriglische 
Fragjnente. 

143 : 16. — " Moving altogether. " This is an adaptation 
of the last line of stanza xi. of Wordsworth's Resolution 
and htdependence. 

144. — Culture ajid Anarchy. The preface to Culture 
and Anarchy and the first chapter, Sweetness a7id Light, 
are made up, with few alterations, from the last lecture 
that Arnold gave as Professor of Poetry at Oxford. This 
lecture was published under the title Culture and its 
Enemies in the Cornhill Magazine for July, 1867, xvi. 36. 
To make the'lecture available for Culture and Anarchy, 
Arnold converted the first few paragraphs into a preface, 
broke the text in general into shorter paragraphs, made 
a few verbal changes, and did away, at the beginning 
and the close, with allusions to the Oxford audience. 
Except in these unimportant ways the Cornhill article 
was unaltered. Culture and Anarchy was published in 
1869. 

144 : 16. — Mr. Frederic Harrison. The article in ques- 
tion, Culture: A Dialogue, appeared originally in the 
Fortnightly Review for November, 1867, viii. 603. The 
tone and tenor of the article are indicated by the quota- 
tion from Shakespeare that stands as its motto : 



"The sovereign'st thing on earth 
Was parmaceti for an inward bri;ise. 



NOTES. 321 

These are the words of advice the fop in Henry IV. 
gives to Hotspur after the battle. The implication is that 
Arnold, with his debonair prescription of Culture for the 
terrible evils of modern society, is no better than a fop in 
the midst of the carnage and horrors of war. Cf. 174 : 16, 
and Selections, p. 177. 

145 : 20. — The Daily Telegraph. See 134 : 2, 
147. — Sweetness atid Light. This Selection, pp. 147-180, 
is the first chapter of Culture and Anarchy, and directly 
io\\o\vsth.e Introduction, given in the preceding Selection. 
For the title see 160 : 6. 

147 : 26. — M. Saint e-Beuve. See the Quarterly Review 
for January, 1866, cxix. 80. The article sketches Sainte- 
Beuve's life and summarizes his more important writings; 
it gives no adequate analysis of his method or style. 

148 : 4. — Curiosity. Cf. Selections,^. 15, where in The 
Fu7iction of Criticis7n (1865) Arnold makes a similar plea 
for the value of Curiosity. 

148 : 23. — Mojitesquieit says. The quotation comes from 
Montesquieu's Discours sur les motifs qui doivent nous 
eticourager aux sciences, prononce le 75- Novenibre 172^. 
Montesquieu's CEuvres completes; ed. Laboulaye, vii. 78. 

149 : 21. — Bishop Wilson. Thomas Wilson (1663-1755) 
was Bishop of the Isle of Man — Lord Bishop of Sodor and 
Man — from 1697 to his death. For the details of his biog- 
raphy, see the folio edition of his Works, London, 1782. 
It is interesting to note that in 1785 copies of this folio edi- 
tion were presented by Dr. Wilson, Prebendary of West- 
minster, son of the Bishop, to "the United States in 
Congress assembled," and by the Secretary of Congress, 
through the " Delegates," transmitted to various Colleges 
and Universities. Arnold has prefixed to Culture and 
Ajtarchy a brief appreciation of Bishop Wilson's religious 
writings. "In the essay which follows," Arnold says, 
" the reader will often find Bishop Wilson quoted. To 
me and to the members of the Society for Promoting Chris- 
tian Knowledge, his name and writings are still, no doubt, 
familiar. But the world is fast going away from old-fash- 



322 NOTES. 

ioned people of his sort, and I learnt with consternation 
lately, from a brilliant and distinguished votary of the nat- 
ural sciences, that he had never so much as heard of 
Bishop Wilson, and that he imagined me to have invented 
him." . . "On a lower range than the Imitation, and 
awakening in our nature chords less poetical and delicate, 
the Maxims of Bishop Wilson are, as a religious work, far 
more solid. To the most sincere ardor and unction, 
Bishop Wilson unites in these Maxims, that downright 
honesty and plain good sense which our English race has 
so powerfully applied to the divine impossibilities of reli- 
gion ; by which it has brought religion so much into practi- 
cal life, and has done its allotted part in promoting upon 
earth the Kingdom of God." 

A perhaps over-ingenious speculation suggests itself as 
regards Arnold's use of Bisljop Wilson's name. In 1858 
died Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta, who was for many 
years a curate or rector in London, and who was widely 
known among Low Churchmen by somewhat voluminous 
writings. Arnold's calm and complete ignoring of any 
Bishop Wilson save the historical Bishop of Sodor and 
Man may have been an intentional bit of satire at the 
expense of the Low Church party and one of its typical 
representatives. 

149 : 21. — To make reason. Cf. Bishop Wilson's Max- 
ims, in his IVorks, ed. 1782, i. 290 : " A prudent Christian 
will resolve at all times to sacrifice his inclinations to 
reason, and his reason to the Will and Word of God." 

152 : 26. — Making endless additions. Cf. Celtic Liter- 
ature, p. 137 : " The hard unintelligence, which is just 
now our bane, cannot be conquered by storm ; it must be 
suppled and reduced by culture, by a growth in the vari- 
ety, fullness, and sweetness of our spiritual life ; and this 
end can only be reached by studying things that are 
outside of ourselves, and by studying them disinter- 
estedly," 

153 : \'&.—To promote. The Thirty-fourth of Bishop 
Wilson's Sermons — that on the Great Duty of Instruct- 



NOTES. 323 

i'ng the Ignorant — urges " that the promoting the King- 
dom of God is very consistent with the ordinary business 
of life." Bishop Wilson's Works, ii. 221. This sermon is 
specially interesting because it emphasizes from the Chris- 
tian point of view the need and value of very much that 
kind of quiet instruction of the people to which Arnold so 
largely devoted himself. " Amongst other means [for 
promoting the Kingdom of God] that of instructing the 
ignorant is the foundation of all the rest. . . For thus 
men are dealt with as reasonable creatures. . . To be 
dealt with as reasonable creatures, we must be informed, — 
What our condition is ; — in what relation we stand to 
God ; what it is he expects from us," etc. 

155 : 2\.—Mr. Roebuck's. Cf. 20 : 24. 

159 : 14. — " Eat and drink.'' This is the first of Frank- 
lin's Rules of Health, as given in Poor Richard's Ahna- 
nack, 1742. Arnold misquotes ; Franklin writes, " such an 
exact quantity as the constitution of thy body allows of." 

159 : 22. — " // is a sign," etc. This sentence forms 
chapter xli. of the Enchiridion of Epictetus. 

160 : 3. — Sweetness and light. This is the phrase by 
which ^sop, in Swift's Battle of the Books, sums up the 
superiority of the ancients over the moderns. " As for us, 
the ancients, we are content, with the bee, to pretend to 
nothing of our own beyond our wings and our voice, that is 
to say, our flights and our language ; for the rest, whatever 
we have got has been by infinite labor and search, and 
ranging through every corner of nature ; the difference is, 
that instead of dirt and poison we have rather chose to fill 
our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind 
with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and 
light." Swift's Works, ed. Scott, 1824, x. 240. 

163 : i.-r-Independents. In America Independents are 
known as Congregationalists, — Orthodox or Unitarian. 
The sect originated in England about 1570. Its distin- 
guishing principle is the right of every congregation of 
believers to independence and self-government. 

163 : 5. — " The Dissidmce of Dissent,'" FrpRi Burke'g 



324 NOTES, 

speech on Coiiciliatioji with America. See Burke's Works, 
ed. London, 1823, iii. 53. 

164 : 24. — 77/^? Pilgrim Fathers' Voyage. The Pilgrim 
Fathers landed from the Mayflower at what is now Plym- 
outh in November, 1620. There were one hundred and 
one in the company, all Independents. 

166 : 18. — Piiblice egestas. See Sallust's Catiline, Iii. : 
" Pro his nos habemus luxuriam atque avaritiam ; publice 
egestatem, privatim opulentiam." ' In place of all this 
former excellence we have to-day luxury and avarice ; 
public want and private wealth.' 

166 : 25. — The Daily Telegraph. See 134 : 2. 

169 : Q. — Mr. Be ales. Edmond Beales was a prominent 
member of Parliament and a very active champion of the 
cause of democracy. He was President of the league for 
securing Manhood Suffrage and made himself conspicuous 
in the summer of 1866 by helping to organize huge popular 
demonstrations in Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park, in 
furtherance of the cause of Reform. Cf. Selections, p. 201, 
1. 15. 

169 : 9. — Charles Bradlaugh. At this time Mr. Brad- 
laugh had not entered Parliament ; he was chiefly known 
as editor of the National Reformer, as a radical lecturer on 
religion, and as an almost rabid advocate by pen and voice 
of extreme democratic opinions. His famous and ulti- 
mately successful struggle for the right to take his seat in 
Parliament without the custom.ary formal oath began much 
later. 

170 : 4. — Dr. Newmaii's Apology. Cardinal Newman's 
Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864) was ostensibly a reply to 
Charles Kingsley's charge that Newman taught the justi- 
fiableness of lying, but was really an account of Newman's 
whole life as teacher, preacher, and ecclesiastic, and an 
explanation of the causes that led him from Evangelical- 
ism through the Via Media to Romanism. Newman's 
hostility to " Liberalism " is specially described on pp. 30, 
214, and 261 of the Apologia^ ed, 1890, Ct Sehctiom^ 
^B<i Notes, 26^ : 9, 



NG-TES. 325 

170 : 10. — QttcE regio. See the A^neid, i, 460. ^neas 
finds scenes from the war about Troy carved upon Dido's 
temple and exclaims to Achates: "What region of the 
earth is not filled with the tale of our woe ? " 

170 : 27. — Mr. Lowe. Robert Lowe, afterward Viscount 
Sherbrooke, had held several offices in the Board of Edu- 
cation and the Board of Trade, and had been conspicuous 
during 1866-67 ^s one of the bitterest opponents of Dis- 
raeli's Reform Bill. His speeches on this subject were 
published in 1867. 

171 : 8. — Middle-class vestries. Cf, 137 14, 

173 : 9.— Air. Roebuck. Cf. 20 : 24. 

174 : w.^Jacobinism. The term, of course, comes from 
the name of the famous political club, Les Jacobins, to 
which Robespierre belonged in 1789-94. The essential 
characteristics of Jacobinism as a habit of mind are given 
by Arnold in the lines that follow. 

174 : 16. — Mr. Frederic Harrison. A prominent Lon- 
don barrister and man of letters, one of the most active of 
the English Positivists or followers of Comte. Cf , 144 : 16, 
and Selections, pp. 177, 247-248, and 251, 

174 : 17. — Comte. Auguste Comte (1798-1857), the French 
philosopher whose s^^stem goes by the name of Positivism. 
He taught that all our knowledge is confined to phenom- 
ena, that all metaphysical speculation is misleading, that 
the aim of science is by observation, experiment, and 
generalization, to reduce to order all the facts of human 
experience and to find for them formulas of ever in- 
creasing scope. Speculation, he taught, goes through 
three stages : first, the theological, where existence and 
its facts are explained as directly dependent on the 
capricious action of supernatural agents ; secondly, the 
metaphysical, where existence and its facts are explained 
as the expressions of unknown substances acting according 
to law ; thirdly, the positive, where the verifiable facts of 
existence are ^lone attended to and the attempt ig made to 
find the sequences by which these facts follow one another. 
Positivism was the i^ost considexabl© attempt, prior to tli© 



326 NOTES, 

Theory of Evolution, to limit all knowledge to such knowl- 
edge as is derivable through the methods of the natural 
sciences and to reduce this knowledge into a complete and 
harmonious system of carefully determined facts and cor- 
related principles. Comte substituted for supernatural 
religion the Religion of Humanity and for the worship of 
God the cult of great men. Positivism has been flippantly 
described as the system that spells God with a small ^ and 
humanity with a large //. 

174 : 17. — Mr. Congreve. Richard Congreve, b. 18 18, 
was for a time a tutor at Wadham College, Oxford, has 
published various essays on historical and social questions, 
and has translated Comte's Catechism of Positive Religion 
(1858). Mr. Congreve is more given to ecclesiasticism 
than is Mr. Frederic Harrison, and whereas Mr. Harrison 
has little to say of the Religion of Humanity and is chiefly 
concerned for the intellectual and moral welfare of Posi- 
tivists, Mr. Congreve lays great stress on the value of 
Religion, and holds weekly meetings in London where 
Positivistic worship is conducted with a good deal of 
ornate detail. For an account of Positivist churches in 
London, see the New York Nation, vol. 1. No. 1285, p. 128. 

174 : 28. — A current in people's minds. Here and in the 
next paragraph Arnold recognizes in a curiously incidental 
fashion the theory that regards opinion as depending nec- 
essarily upon social conditions, and as subject to law in 
its apparently whimsical changes. There is something a 
trifle grotesque in his arrogating to himself and to " Cul- 
ture " special ownership in this conception of the growth 
of opinion — a conception which is distinctively scientific 
and tends to reduce even the flurries of popular whim to 
law, and to systematize even the caprices of fashion. 

175 : 8. — Preller. Ludwig Preller (1809-61) w^as from 
1846 to 1861 Librarian-in-chief at Weimar ; he had pre- 
viously been a Professor in several German universities, in- 
cluding Jena, His most important works were his Greek 
Mythology (1854-55) and his Roman Mythology (1858). 

175 : 31.-/4 new version of the Book of Job, Arnold 



iXOTES. 327 

misrepresents Franklin. The " project " for a new version 
oi Job was merely a somewhat elaborate joke. Among the 
*' Bagatelles," now included in the second volume of Frank- 
lin's Works, is a piece called The Levee, in which Frank- 
lin translates the account in Job of Satan's visit to God into 
the language of the ceremonial of a European court ; the 
translation is obviously meant to be amusing. Immediately 
after this piece comes the so-called " project " for a new ver- 
sion of the Book of Job, with a half-dozen specimen verses. 
In one of these verses the phrasing is the same with that 
of The Levee, and in all of them the account of the Bible 
incidents is so managed as to be absurdly suggestive of 
modern politics and intrigue. Take for example, Frank- 
lin's paraphrase of verse ii. ; the original is as follows : 
" But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he 
hath, and he will curse thee to thy face." With Franklin 
this becomes, " Try him; — only withdraw your favor, turn 
him out of his places, and withhold his pensions, and you 
v/ill soon find him in the opposition." Arnold criticises 
Franklin's bit of burlesque with astonishing seriousness 
and literalness. For The Levee and the Proposed New 
Version, see Franklin's Works, ed. Boston, 1836, ii. 164. 

176 : 16. — Deo7itology. Bentham's Deontology, or The 
Science of Morality (the theory of what is fitting, — of the 
ought, — Grk. rh 5iov, that which is binding or right), was 
published in 1834, two years after Bentham's death. For 
the passage Arnold quotes, see i. 39. Cf. 135 : 19. 

176 : 30. — Comte. Cf. 174 : 17. 

176 : 30. — Mr. Buckle. He is remembered through his 
heroic attempt, in his History of Civilization in England 
(vol. i. , 1857 ; ii. , 1861), to put history on a scientific basis and 
to trace the laws that have determined the development of 
national life. He was without university training, studied 
for the most part alone, and was doubtless in some degree 
victimized by his theories. His History of Civilization is 
full of brilliant suggestion, and shows enormous reading, 
but is not always sure in its facts, and is often unsafe in its 
speculation. His main thesis, that progress depends wholly 



32S IVOTKS. 

on intellectual enlightenment, does not tally with the later 
sociological theories of evolutionists. Buckle wrote before 
the days of evolution. His History has been recently de- 
fended, at great length by Mr. J. M. Robertson in Buckle 
and his Critics : A Study in Sociology ^ London, 1895. 

176 : 30.— Mr. Mill. John Stuart Mill (1806-73), the 
most prominent perpetuator in the middle of the century of 
the Locke and Hume tradition in philosophy, before it was 
transformed by the assimilation of the results of modern 
science. He was the immediate disciple of his father 
James Mill and of Jerem}'- Bentham. The history of his 
intellectual life from his earliest years is given in his 
Autobiography, a book which should be read at the 
same time with Mark Pattison's Memoirs and Cardinal 
Newman's Apologia. His System of Logic appeared in 
1843 and his Political Economy in 1848. His three most 
characteristic short works are, On Liberty {id>s()), Utilitari- 
anism (1862), and the Subjection of Womeii (1869). 

179 : 28. — A be lard. Pierre Abailard (1079-1142) was one 
of the most brilliant thinkers and famous teachers of the 
Middle Ages. During the first years of the twelfth century 
he lectured in Paris to crowds of students from all over 
Europe. Later, after many mischances largel}^ due to 
his romantic passion for Heloise, the story of which 
has entered so variously into European literature, he 
turned hermit and took up his abode in the wilderness. 
But he was soon besieged once more with pupils, who 
lived in huts in the desert to be near him and listen to 
his teaching. Some years later Abelard was accused of 
heresy by Bernard, through whose influence he was con- 
demned by a church Council about 1140. See Abailard: 
sa vie sa philosophic et sa theo logic, by Charles Remusat, 
Paris, 1845. 

179 : 31. — Lessi7ig. G. E. Lessing (1729-81) was the 
re-creator of German literature. He assailed the slavish 
imitation of French pseudo-classicism, prevalent in 
the writings of such man as Gottsched, and turned to 
English literature for his models. In his Laocoon and 



NOTES. 329 

Dramaturgic he interpreted Classical art anew and freed 
it from the false glosses of French pseudo-classical criti- 
cism. As a dramatist he dealt frankly and powerfully 
with actual life, and did much to make German literature 
the imaginative and sincere expression of German national 
ideals. In Nathan dcr IVeise, he pleaded for religious 
tolerance. Everywhere he stood for clear thought, genu- 
ine emotion, national enthusiasm against pedantry, artifici- 
ality, and academicism. During his later 5^ears he was 
head Librarian at Wolfenbiittel, near Brunswick. 

179 : 32.— //<?;'<^t'r (1744-1803). Probably Herder's great- 
est claim to remembrance lies in the fact that he first 
grasped firmly and applied widely the conception of litera- 
ture that explains it as a growth and development depend- 
ent upon social conditions. He was also one of the earliest 
of the Germans to feel the artistic charm of the Middle 
Ages, and it was through him that Goethe was led to an ap- 
preciation of Medicevalism. His mind was astonishingly 
active and fertile, but his artistic sense was not sure, and 
he produced little work that lives through sheer beauty. 
His beneficial influence on his contemporaries cannot be 
measured by the actual survival of his writings. During 
the latter part of his life he vras court-preacher at 
Weimar. 

180 : 12. — St. Augustine. See the Confessions of St. 
Augustine, bk. xiii. ch, xviii, ; J. G. Pilkington's transla- 
tion, Edinburgh, 1886, p. 369. 

181 . — Hebraism and Hellenism. The terms are probably 
taken from Heine. See Heine's Uber Ludwig Borne, 
bk. i. Werke, ed. Stuttgart, x. 12 : " 'Jew' and ' Chris- 
tian ' are for me words of quite similar meaning and 
are both opposed to Hellene, by which name also I denote 
no special nation, but a mental habit and a mode of con- 
ceiving life, which are both innate and the result of train- 
ing. In this connection I might say : All men are either 
Jews or Hellenes, men ascetic in their instincts, hostile to 
culture, spiritual fanatics, or men of vigorous good cheer, 
full of the pride of life, Naturalists. Thus there have been 



33«^ JVOTES-. 

Hellenes in the families of German pastors, and there have 
been Jews who were born in Athens and perhaps the 
direct descendants of Theseus. The beard makes not the 
Jew, nor the peruke the Christian." It should be noted 
that somewhat later in this Selectioji (p. 183), Arnold speaks 
of Heine's recognition of the contrast between Hellene and 
Hebraist and asserts that Heine brings in Hebraism " just 
as a foil and contrast to Hellenism, and to make the superi- 
ority of Hellenism more manifest." 

In Wordsworth's Preface to the 18 15 edition of his 
Poems there is an interesting contrast between the Hebrew 
mind and imagination and those of the Greeks and Romans. 
Milton is " a Hebrew in soul." See Wordsworth's Woj'ks, 
ed. Morley, 882-8S3. The comparison is, however, brief, 
and hardly goes beyond artistic matters. 

181 : I. — This fundamental ground. These are the 
opening words of chap. iv. of Culture and A7iarchy. In 
chap. iii. Arnold has described the various defective types 
of which English society consists, — Barbarians, Philistines, 
the Populace, — and has exemplified the evils that arise from 
the self-will with which each type lives out its own life irre- 
sponsibly. The tendency of all English life and thought, 
Arnold insists, is to overemphasize the right of the individ- 
ual to go his own way ; confusion and a kind of anarchy 
result. "We see, then," Arnold concludes, "how indis- 
pensable to that human perfection which we seek is, in the 
opinion of good judges, some public recognition and estab- 
lishment of our best self, or right reason. AVe see how our 
habits and practice oppose themselves to such a recogni- 
tion, and the many inconveniences which we therefore 
suffer. But now let us try to go a little deeper, and to find 
beneath our actual habits and practice the very ground 
and cause out of which they spring." Now follows the 
Selection in the text. 

181 : 6. — The best light you have. "Two things a Chris- 
tian will do : Never go against the best light he has ; this 
will prove his sincerity : — and secondly, to take care that 
his light be not darkness ; that is, that he mistake not his 



A'OTES. Z^i 

rule by which he ought to go." Bishop AVilson's Ma.xiuis, 
Works, ed, 1782, i. 290. 

183 : 6. — Frederick Robert so ji (1816-53), Robertson of 
Brighton — he went to Brighton in 1847 — was one of the 
most eloquent preachers of his day. He belonged to no 
special party in the Church of England, at times ran coun- 
ter to the prejudices of all parties, was fearless in his advo- 
cacy of his own ideas, was embroiled with various social 
cliques in Brighton because of his contention for reforms, 
and wore out his nervous, eager temperament in his strug- 
gle to maintain his ideals. See Rev. Stopford Brooke's 
Life and Letters of Frederz'cJc Robert so ?i (1865). The 
sermon Arnold alludes to is doubtless the Advent Lecture 
of December .6, 1849, The Grecian. " Four characteris- 
tics," Robertson urges, *' marked Grecian life and Grecian 
religion: Restlessness — Worldliness — The Worship of the 
Beautiful — The Worship of the Human." See Robertson's 
Sennons, ed Boston, 1869, i. 195. 

183 : II. — Heinrich Heine. See 181. For an interesting 
discussion of Heine's Paganism, see Emile Hennequin's 
J&crivaifis Francises, Paris, 1889, p. 82. 

186 : 8, — Aristotle will tmdo'valiie knowing. See the 
Nico7nachean Ethics, bk, ii. chap, iii, 

186 : 15. — Epic fetus exhorts us. See, for example, the 
chapter " Concerning those w^ho Embrace Philosophy in 
Words," The Discourses of Epictetus, bk. ii. chap, xix. : 
"Show me a Stoic, if you have one. Where? Orhowshould 
you ? You can show, indeed, a thousand who repeat the 
Stoic reasonings. . . Show me one who is sick, and 
happy ; in danger, and happy ; dying, and happy ; exiled, 
and happy ; disgraced, and happy. . . Why then do you 
not finish your work, if you have the proper aims ? " The 
Works of Epic let us, translated by T. W. Higginson, 
160-161. 

186:19. — Plato . . . calls life. See the 6^^r^/<2j-, where 
Socrates discusses with Callicles the need of self-control. 
Callicles insists that the truly happy life consists in allow- 
ing one's desires "to wax to the uttermost" and then 



:^Z^ NOTES. 

ministering to tlieni. Socrates contends for the life of 
absolutely controlled desires. Callicles finds such a life 
absurd ; the life of " those who want nothing " cannot be 
the ideal happy life, " for then stones and the dead 
would be the happiest of all." " Yes," replies Socrates, 
" and your words may remind us that life is a fearful 
thing ; and I think that Euripides was probably right in 
saying ' Who knows if life be not death and death life ? ' 
for I think that we are verjr likely dead. " Socrates then 
goes on to preach the doctrine of the mortification of de- 
sires. See Jowett's Dialogues of Plato, i. 81-82. 

186 : 20. — The Imitatio7i. The famous mediaeval devo- 
tional manual usually ascribed to Thomas a Kempis, a 
monk of the fifteenth century, who spent his life in a con- 
vent near Utrecht. The doctrine of ascet'cism pervades 
the whole manual. See the chapter that treats " Of the 
Royal Road of the Holy Cross," bk. ii. chap. xii. : " Behold 
all is in the Cross, and in dying lies all ; and there is no 
other way to life and to true inward peace but the way of 
the holy cross and of daily mortification." . . " Know for 
certain that thou must lead a dying life ; and the more a 
man dies to himself, the more he begins to live to God." 
The Imitatio7i of Christ, Kegan Paul & Co., 18S1 (Parch- 
ment Library), pp. 90, 95. 

186 : 31. — The 7noral virtues . . . the porch. See the 
Nicoviachean Ethics, bk. x. chap, viii.: "It is only in a 
secondary sense that the life which accords with other, 
/. e. , noil-speculative, virtue can be said to be happy ; for 
the activities of such virtue are human, they have no 
divine element.''' Aristotle goes on to demonstrate that 
the activity of the Gods consists in speculation, and that 
" the life of men is blessed in so far as it possesses a cer- 
tain resemblance to their speculative activity." Welldon's 
translation, Macmillan, 1892, pp. 338 and 341. 

187 : 3. — Plato expressly denies. " But he who is a phi- 
losopher or lover of learning {(pCKoiiaQiii), and is entirely pure 
at departing, is alone permitted to reach the gods. " Plato's 
Phcedo, 82, D. See Jowett's Dialogues of Plato, i. 411. 



KOTES. 2>yl 

187 : 27. — The best man is he. The passage occurs in 
Socrates's talk with Hermogenes over his approaching 
trial. Socrates justifies his serenity of mind and explains 
wherein he seems to himself to have obtained happiness 
through living well. See Xenophon's Memorabilia, bk. iv. 
chap. viii. 

190 : 15. — My Saviour banished joy. Arnold seems to 
have in mind Herbert's poem, The Size : 

" Content thee, greedie heart. 
Modest and moderate joyes to those that have 
Title to more hereafter when they part 
Are passing brave." 

The fifth stanza begins : 

" Thy Saviour sentenc'd joy, 
And in the flesh condemn'd it as unfit ; 
At least in lump." 

Herbert's Works, ed. Grosart, 1874, i. 157. 

191 : I. — St. Atigiis tine's Qm/essions. See the admirable 
translation by J. G. Pilkington, Edinburgh, 1886. 

191 : 2. — The Imitation. Cf. 186 : 20. 

194 : 15. — Mr. Murphy. See the second chapter of Cul- 
ture and Anarchy : " Mr. Murphy lectures at Birmingham, 
and showers on the Catholic population of that town ' words,' 
says the Home Secretary, ' only fit to be addressed to 
thieves or murderers.' What then? Mr. Murphy has his 
own reasons of several kinds. . . He is doing as he likes ; 
or, in worthier language, asserting his personal liberty. . . 
The moment it is plainly put before us that a man is 
asserting his personal liberty, we are half disarmed ; be- 
cause we are believers in freedom, and not in some dream 
of a right reason to which the assertion of our reason is to 
be subordinated. " Mr. Murphy and his religious extrava- 
gance form for Arnold an illustration of the kind of " an- 
archy " in English social conditions that can be corrected 
solely by " Culture." See Culture and Anarchy, p. 47. 

194 : 30. — Purita7iism . . . St. Paul. Arnold treats 



334 XOTES. 

this topic at length in his St. Paul and Protestantism 
(1870). 

195 : 14. — Already pointed out. See Culture and Anar- 
chy , p. 121, 

197 : 19. — Life after our physical death. Cf. Arnold's 
Sonnet, Immortality : 

" No, no ! the energy of life may be 
Kept on after the grave, but not begun ; 
And he who flagg'd not in the earthlj' strife, 
From sti-ength to strength advancing— only he, 
His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, 
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life." 

Arnold's Poetical Works^ ed. 1890, p. 183. 

197 : 24. — One of the noblest collects. The Collect for 
Easter Even: "Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized 
into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, 
so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections we may be 
buried with him ; and that through the grave, and gate of 
deatli, we may pass to our jo^^ful resurrection ; for his 
merits, who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, 
thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord." 

199 : 23. — Faraday. Cf. 121 : 26. 

200 : 24. — As Plato says. For the classic passage in 
which Plato describes the development of the soul through 
its devotion to Beauty see the Symposium, 199-212; Jowett's 
Dialogues of Plato, i. 491-503. 

201 : 13. — Mr. Spurgeon . . . voluntaryism. By vol- 
untaryism is meant the advocacy of a Free as opposed to 
a State Church. Cf. Culture and Anarchy, p. 61 : " Again, 
as culture's way of working for reason and the will of God 
is by directly trying to know more about them, while the 
Dissidence of Dissent is evidently in itself no effort of this 
kind, nor is its Free Church, in fact, a church with worthier 
conceptions of God and the ordering of the world than the 
State Church professes, but with mainly the same concep- 
tions of these as the State Church has, only that every 
man is to comport himself as he likes in professing them — 



NOTES. 335 

this being so, I cannot at once accept the non-conformity 
any more than the industrialism and the other great works 
of our Liberal middle class as proof positive that this 
class is in possession of light, and that here is the true seat 
of authority for which we are in search." 

201 : 14. — Mr. Bright . . . perso7ial liberty. Cf. Cul- 
ture and Anarchy, p. 43 : " Mr. Bright , . . said forcibly 
in one of his great speeches, what many other people are 
every day saying less forcibly, that the central idea of 
English life and politics is the assertion of perso7ial lib- 
erty. Evidently this is so ; but evidently, also, as feudal- 
ism, which with its ideas and habits of subordination was 
for many centuries silently behind the British Constitu- 
tion, dies out, and we are left with nothing but our system 
of checks, and our notion of its being the great right and 
happiness of an Englishman to do as far as possible what 
he likes, we are in danger of drifting toward anarchy." 

201 : is.—Mr. Beales. Cf. 169 : 9. 

206 : 17. — Henry More (1614-87). He is commonly 
called Henry More the Platonist. He was one of the four 
Cambridge men — the others were Cudworth, Smith, and 
Whichcote— who in the latter part of the seventeenth cen- 
tury withstood the influence of the mechanical philosophy 
of Descartes and Hobbes through recourse to Plato and 
Idealism, His Divine Dialogues are perhaps his most 
representative work from the point of view of literature. 
He is studied suggestively and some of his ideas and 
phrases are reproduced in Mr. Shorthouse's John Ingle- 
sant. " His great discovery," says Mr. A, C. Benson in a 
recent essay, "burst upon him like a flash of light — the 
nearness and accessibility of God, whom he had been seek- 
ing so far off and at such a transcendent height ; his reali- 
zation of the truth that the Kingdom of God does not dwell 
in great sublimities, and, so to speak, upon the mountain 
tops, but that it is within each one of us." See A. C. Ben- 
son's ^.yj-^jj. New York, 1896, p. 65, and Arnold's Last 
Essays, p. 197. 

207 : 1^.— Sublime hoc candms, Cicero quotes th© 



336 NOTES. 

phrase from Ennius in De Natura Deorum, ii. 25 : " As- 
pice hoc sublime can dens quod invocant omnes Jovem." 
' Behold this Brilliant on high which all men call Jupiter.' 
Arnold's text misprints invocent for invocant, and Arnold 
transposes hoc and sublime. 

208 : 31. — Qu'est-ce-quc la nature? See Les Pensees 
de Blaise Pascal, ed. Molinier, 1879, i, 69, De la justice. 
Coutumes et prejugees. 

210 : 12. — Rabbijiisni, Rabbis are authenticated Teach- 
ers of the Jewish Law. Rabbinism is the religious and 
philosophic doctrine developed in the schools of the 
Rabbis, 

213 : 8. — Ovid. " Quis locus," etc. ' What place is 
more awful than a temple ? Yet temples also must a 
woman shun, if she be prone to err.' 

213 : 16. — Hominum divonique. Part of the first lines of 
the opening invocation of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura : 
" -^neadum genetrix hominum," etc. ' Great mother of 
the Romans, delight of men and gods, divine Venus.' 

214 : 3. — Mr. Birks. Thomas Rawdon Birks, author of 
" The Two Later Visions of Daniel," " Memoirs of the 
late Rev. E. Bickersteth,"etc., had in 1873 just been made 
Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge. 

215 : 21. — The moral and intelligent. The phrase has 
been reiterated by Arnold in Literature and Dogma as 
characteristic of scientific theology. Cf. the Preface, 
p. ix.: " Now, the assumption with which all the churches 
and sects set out, that there is ' a Great Personal First 
Cause, the moral and intelligent governor of the universe,' 
and that from him the Bible derives its authority, cannot 
at present, at any rate, be verified." Cf , also Arnold's 
ridicule of attempts to describe God's ways to man in the 
phraseology of an Anglo-Saxon man of business : St. Paul 
and Protestantism, p. 14. 

216 : 18. — Saying of Izaak Walton. See the last chap- 
ter of the first part of Walton's Complete Angler, Piscator, 
who is on his way home from a good day's fishing, moralizes 
for the benefit of the Scholar; ' ' And that our present happi- 



NOTES. 337 

ness may appear to be the greater, and we the more thank- 
ful for it, I will beg you to consider with me, how many do, 
even at this very time, lie under the torment of the stone, 
the gout, and toothache ; and this we are free from. And 
every misery that I miss is a new mercy : and therefore let 
us be thankful." Complete Angler, ed. Major, 1844, p. 248. 

220 : 12. — The prison of Puritanism. See Arnold's essay 
on Heinrich Heine, Essays, i. 176. The sentence specially 
commended itself to Arnold, and is quoted also in the essay 
on Falkland, Mixed Essays, p. 170. 

220 : IS.— Rabelais {ca. 1490-1553). The incorrigible 
jester of the early Renaissance. His Gargantua and Pan- 
tagruel comment recklessly on the whole scope of life as it 
shaped itself in the imaginations of men newly emanci- 
pated from the asceticism of the Middle Ages. 

220 : 16. — George Fox (1624-90). The first of the 
Quakers, 

221 : IS. —Rights 0/ Man. In August, 1789, the Constit- 
uent Assembly in Paris voted the "Declaration of the 
Rights of Man." This was a kind of Confession of Faith 
of the new Revolutionary religion. The first two articles 
were as follows : 

I. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights, 

II, These rights are : liberty, property, security, and 
resistance to oppression. See Martin's France, i. 78. 

222 : 9. — La Boheme. The world of those chartered 
libertines — struggling young painters and poets. George 
Sand was the first to use the word in this sense in her La 
Derniere Aldini (1837), which closed with the exclama- 
tion : Vive la Boheme! Henri Murger's famous Scenes 
de la vie de Boheme was published in 1848. 

224 : 16, — Das Gemeine. Cf. Selections and Notes, 
138 : 9. 

225 : 17. — For acuteness . . . the Greeks. These lines 
are quoted in MacFirbis's Book of Genealogies, a curious 
Irish work of the seventeenth century. Arnold omits sev- 
eral characterizations between those of the Saxons and th^ 



33^ NOTES. 

" For haughtiness, the Spaniards; 
For covetousess and revenge, the French," etc. 

See Eugene O'Curry's Lectures, Dublin, 1861, p. 224. 

226 : 4. — M. Renan (1823-92), the famous French savant ^ 
author of the well-known Vie de Jesus. For the essay 
from which Arnold quotes, see Renan's Essais de Alorale 
et de Critique, Paris, 1859, p. 375. 

227 : 22. — Always ready to react. See Martin's France, 
ed. 1857, i. 36. 

229 : 20. — Architectonice, '0 dpxi-T^KTojp was " the mas- 
ter builder " whose conception governed the whole struc- 
ture of a building. 'H apxt'TCKToviKi^ with rix^n, art, 
understood, means the complete mastery in art that is 
characteristic of the perfectly accomplished artist and 
that secures the highest results, 

229 : 21. — Agamemnon. One of ^schylus's tragedies. 

230 : 15. — Sybaris. A Greek city in the south of Italy, 
that in the sixth century b. c. developed great wealth 
and luxury. Sybarite became the traditional name for a 
rich and careless pleasure-taker. 

250 : 17. — BaicE. A town on the Mediterranean not far 
from what is now Naples, the site of the villas of many 
wealthy Romans. Cf. Horace's first £)^/i'//^, 1. S3: 

*' Nullus in orbe sinus Baiis praelucet amcenis." 
' No bay in the world outshines that of lovely Baiae.' 

230 : 25. — The knives. This quotation and an abstract 
of the Battle may be found in O'Curry's Lectures, p. 248. 
The battle occurred, according to the Annals, in the year 
of the world 3330. 

231 : 9. — Forth to the war. Cf . The Poems of Ossian, 
ed. 1822, ii. 38: " Cormul went forth to the strife, the 
brother of car-borne Crothar. He went forth, but he fell. 
The sigh of his people rose." Also, ii. 24: " Our young 
heroes, O warriors ! are like the renown of our fathers. 
They fight in youth. They fall. Their names are in 
song. " Both passages are from Teniora, 



NOTES. 339 

233 : 29. — Philistinism. Cf. 139 : i. 

235 : 10. — Rue de Rivoli. A famous street of shops and 
hotels in Paris; it is taken by Arnold as symbolic of 
French taste, or rather of " Latin precision and clear rea- 
son." Stonehenge, with its Druidic circle, stands pre- 
sumably for Celtic "spirituality"; just how Nuremberg 
corresponds to or expresses Teutonic " fidelity to nature," 
or the " steady humdrum habit of the creeping Saxon," it 
is not so easy to see. 

235 : 13- — Mr. Tom Taylor's translations. Tom Tay- 
lor (1817-S0), an oddly versatile man of letters, who pro- 
duced successful plays, readable biographies, and confident 
art criticism with the utmost facility. He was editor of 
Punch from 1874 to 1880. His best known play is Masks 
and Faces. His Ballads and Songs of Brittany ap- 
peared in 1865. It is specially interesting as containing 
several engravings of Millais's and at least one each of 
Charles Keene's and John Tenniel's. 

238 : 5. — Air. Cob den. Richard Cobden (1804-65), the 
famous Liberal politician and Anti-Corn Law agitator. 
The passage to which Arnold objects, commented severely 
on English ignorance of American geography as illustrated 
by a Times article, in which three or four of the largest 
North American rivers were absurdly confused and mal- 
treated. "When I was at Athens," said Cobden, "I 
sallied out one summer morning to see the far-famed 
river, the Ilyssus, and after walking for some hundred 
yards up what appeared to be the bed of a winter torrent, 
I came up to a number of Athenian laundresses, and I 
found they had dammed up this far-famed classic river, 
and that they were using every drop of water for their 
linen and such sanitary purposes. I say, Why should not 
the young gentlemen who are taught all about the geog- 
raphy of the Ilyssus know something about the geography 
of the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Missouri ? " See John 
Morley's Cobden, ii. 479. Cf. Mr. Balfour's Cobden and the 
Manchester School in his Essays and Addresses. 

238 ; 28. — Aliens in speech. Lord Lyndhurst, John 



340 NOTES. 

Singleton Copley (1772-1S63), strenuously disowned the 
phrase. He was charged with having used it during the 
debates of 1836, Cf. Sir Theodore Martin's Lord Lynd- 
hiirst, p. 346. 

239 : 28. — Eugene O'Ciirry (1795-1862). He held the 
chair of Irish History in the Catholic University at Dub- 
lin—the university of which Newman was for a time 
rector. 

240 : 10. — Lord Melville. Henry Dundas, Viscount 
Melville (1741-1811), was one of the most strenuous sup- 
porters of Lord North's policy toward the American 
colonies. 

241 : 4. — Mr. Roebuck's and Mr. Lowe's. For Mr. 
Roebuck, see Selections and Notes, 20 : 24, and 173 : 9. 
For Mr. Lowe, see 170 : 27. 

241 : 6. — Daily Telegraph. Cf. 134 : 2. 

241 : 21. — Fenianism. The Fenians were a secret 
society, founded about i860, to obtain by force indepen- 
dence for Ireland. They derive their name from Fin, a 
legendary Irish hero, MacPherson's Fingal, father of 
Ossian. 

242. — Compulsory Education. This and the following 
Selection are Letters vi. and xii. of Friejidship's Gar- 
land, published in book form in 1871, with the motto 
Manibus date lilia plenis — Bring handfuls of lilies. 
Friendship's Garland, originally contributed to the Pall 
Mall Gazette as a series of Letters, is far more searchingly 
ironical in its treatment of English life than Culture and 
Anarchy. Its essential ideas, however, remain those of 
the earlier book. It insists on the need of culture (which 
here goes by the German name, Geist) and on the ina- 
bility of mere political machinerj'- to remedy existing 
evils; it illustrates the absurdities of outworn mediaeval 
traditions and the grotesqueness of sectarian prejudices. 
Most of the Letters are signed by Arnold himself, who 
poses as a humble candidate for higher knowledge, tempo- 
rarily under the engrossing influence of a young German 
philosopher, Arminius von Thunder-ten-Tronckh. A few of 



NOTES. 341 

the Letters purport to be from Arminins, and one, No. 
xii., from Young Leo, the typical newswriter of the Daily 
Telegraph. By the use of Arminius's fierce intellectualism 
Arnold exposes unsparingly many of the most ludicrous 
imperfections in English life; yet, by his clever suggestion 
of Arminius's Prussian pedantries and pedagogic crocheti- 
ness of temper, he makes it possible for an English reader to 
take Arrainius humorously, feel some of his own superi- 
ority, and hence accept criticism without fatal injury 
to his self-esteem. Meanwhile^ Arnold deprecates the 
charge of self-sufficiency by means of much droll self- 
caricature. 

No attempt is made in the Notes to explain the continual 
allusions in these Selections to current events and to other 
parts of Friendship's Garland. Arnold's general inten- 
tion and the quality of his irony are plain enough. 

258. — America. This was written before Arnold's visit 
to America in 1883-84. For Arnold's direct impressions of 
American life, — impressions that, despite some acerbity 
and some desire to "hold an English review of his 
Maker's grotesques, "are, on the whole, kindly and appre- 
ciative, — the reader should turn to the second volume of 
the Letters. Numbers, in Discourses in America, gives a 
formal criticism of the special dangers of American life. 

259 : i.—M. Renan. Cf. 226 : 4 and no : 2. For the 
passage quoted, see Renan's Questio?is Contemporaines, 
Preface, vii; cf. p. 76 of the essay. 

263 : 2'].—Mr. Beecher. Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87), 
for m.any years pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. 

263 : 2-].— Brother Noyes. J. H. Noyes (i Si 1-86), 
founder of the so-called Oneida Community. Hepworth 
Dixon gave in 1867 a picturesque account of this com- 
munity in New America, chap. 53. 

263 : 30.— J/r. Ezra Cornell (1807-74), founder of Cor- 
nell University, Ithaca, N. Y. According to its charter 
the university was established with the purpose of teach- 
ing "such branches of learning as are related to agri- 
culture and the mechanic arts, including military tactics." 



342 NOTES. 

264 : 3. — Mr. White. See Culture and Autarchy, Pref- 
ace, p. xvi : "A Nonconformist minister, the Rev. 
Edward White, who has written a temperate and well- 
reasoned pamphlet against Church establishments, says 
that • the unendowed and unestablished communities of 
England exert full as much moral and ennobling influ- 
ence upon the conduct of statesmen as that Church which 
is both established and endowed.' " 

265. — Emerson. This appreciation of Emerson, one of 
the three "Discourses" that Arnold gave on his lecture- 
tour in America, illustrates well the limitations as well as 
the excellences of his literary criticism. The lack of any 
strenuous attempt to get at the real substance of Emer- 
son's teaching and to correlate it with the intellectual 
tendencies of the times is conspicuous and characteristic; 
the essay does not put us at the center of Emerson's 
thought and reveal it in its entirety and self-consistency, 
and in its necessary connection with the social conditions 
by which it was largely determined. On the other hand, 
the ethical quality of Emerson's work is delicately per- 
ceived and described; the emotional quality of his thought 
and moods and style, in so far as they react upon charac- 
ter, is appreciated with fine sensitiveness of taste and ex- 
quisite sympathy. Here, as ever, Arnold as a critic is 
most distinctively an appreciator of the beauty of the art 
of those "that live in the spirit." Cf. the Introduction^ 
pp. xxxvi-xliii. 

265 : I. — Forty years ago. As regards Arnold's style in 
this essay, see the hitrodiiction, pp. Ixiv-lxv. 

265 : 9. — Cardinal New7nan (1801-90). Cf. 170 : 4, He 
was the leader of the Oxford movement, 1830-41, and at 
the time of which Arnold speaks was still preaching and 
writing with the purpose of reviving the spiritual life of 
the Anglican Church and reinvesting the Church with 
mediaeval dignity and splendor. He resigned his position 
as preacher to the University in 1843 and withdrew to 
Littlemore, where he had planned founding a monastery. 
In 1845 he entered the Church of Rome. In 1854 he wa§ 



NOTES. 343 

made Rector of the new Catholic University at Dublin. 
After a few years he took up his abode in the Oratory near 
Birmingham, where he died in 1890, 

265 : 17. — St. Mar/ s pulpit. St. Mary's is the Cathedral 
Church of Oxford. 

266 : I. — After the fever of life. See Newman's Sermon 
on Peace in Believing; Parochial and Plaijt Serinons^ 
vi. 369. The sermon was preached May 29, 1839. 

266 : 7. — Littleinore. A small town within an easy walk 
of Oxford. In 1828, when Newman was made incumbent 
of St. Mary's, he was also made chaplain of Littlemore. 
He withdrew to Littlemore in 1841, though he did not re- 
sign from St. Mary's till 1843. 

266 : 29. — Somewhere or other. See Selections, p. 137. 

267 : 6. — Edward Irving (i 792-1 834). He was famous 
as an eloquent pulpit orator, and afterward as the founder 
of a new sect, the so-called Holy Catholic Apostolic Church, 
which still exists in London. His pretensions as a prophet 
became finally so extreme that he was deserted by all his 
followers save a few fanatics, Cf. Carlyle's Rejniniscences. 
Irving was for a time engaged to Jane Welch, afterward 
Mrs. Carlyle. 

267 : 12. — Goethe. Arnold here substantially admits his 
discipleship of Goethe. Cf. Introductiofi, p. Ixxix. 

267 : 14. — Wilhelm Meister. Carlyle's translation ap- 
peared in 1824. 

267 : 23. — Dirge over Mignon. See IVilhebn Meister, 
bk. viii. chap. viii. 

268 : 19. — Weimar. Goethe's home. 

269 : 27. — A German critic. Hermann Grimm, now 
Professor in Berlin University. See Arnold's A French 
Critic 071 Goethe : " Then there comes a scion of the ex- 
cellent stock of the Grimms, a Professor Hermann Grimm, 
and lectures on Goethe at Berlin, now that the Germans 
have conquered the French, and are the first military 
power in the world, and have become a great nation, and 
require a national poet to match; and Professor Grimm 
says of Faust, of which Tieck had spoken so coldly: ' The 



344 NOTES, 

career of this, the greatest work of the greatest poet of all 
times and of all peoples, has but just begun, and we have 
been making only the first attempts at drawing forth its 
contents.' " Mixed Essays, ed. 1883, p. 208. 

271:23. — MiIto}i. See Milton's Of Education: "To 
which [/. e. logic and rhetoric] poetry would be made subse- 
quent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less subtile 
and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate." 
Prose IVor^s, London, 1S06, i. 281. 

272 : 10. — So nigh is grandeu7\ The last lines of the 
third of Emerson's Voluntaries: Poems, ed. 1883, p. 237. 

272 : 15. — Thotigh love repine. One of the Quatrains, 
Sacrifice: Poems, p. 314. 

272 : 23. — And ever. From May-Day: Poems, p. 190. 

273 : 18. — Cow per. Several of Cowper's poems moralize 
gracefully on the lives of insects, birds, or animals; e. g., 
the Pijie apple and the Bee, the Raven, the Nightingale 
and the Glowworm. Possibly Arnold, with his customary 
desire to eulogize totality, means to call to mind the moral 
of the Nightingale a7id Glowworm: 

" Hence jarring sectaries may learn 
Their real interest to discern; 
That brother should not war with brother, 
And worry and devour each other; 
But sing and shine with sweet consent, 
Till life's poor transient night is spent, 
Respecting in each other's case 
The gifts of nature and of grace." 

273 : 19. — Bin-ns. See his To a Mouse: Poems, Globe 
ed., p. 54. 

274:11. — The Dial. "The literary achievments of 
Transcendentalism are best exhibited in the Dial, a 
quarterly ' Magazine for Literature, Philosophy, and Re- 
ligion,' begun July, 1840, and ending April, 1844. The 
editors were Margaret Fuller and R. W. Emerson. . . 
Mr. Emerson's bravest lectures and noblest poems were 
first printed there. Margaret Fuller, besides numerous 



NOTES. 345 

pieces of miscellaneous criticism, contributed the article 
on Goethe, alone enough to establish her fame as a dis- 
cerner of spirits." O. B. Frothingham's Transceiidetital- 
ism, p. 132, Among the other contributors were George 
Ripley, James Freeman Clarke, Theodore Parker, Henry 
Thoreau, the Channings, and C. P. Cranch. 

274 : 25. — Arthur Stanley (181 5-81). He is best re- 
membered as Dean of Westminster, In 1844 he published 
a Life of Dr. Arnold of Rugby, Matthew Arnold's father. 
Cf. 28:11. 

275 : 25. — Sartor Resartus. The poor publisher was not 
so wrong-headed as he is made to appear; he was simply 
not a prophet. Sartor, as a serial in Eraser's Magazine 
in 1S33-34, had led to many violent protests on the part 
of subscribers, and, when published as a book in 1838, had 
called forth but two letters of commendation, — one from 
Ralph Waldo Emerson and one from a Roman Catholic 
priest in Ireland. Under the circumstances, the publisher 
can hardly be blamed for having hesitated about ' ' a new 
edition." 

275 : 29. — Regent Street. A street of fashionable shops 
in London, not far from Club-land. 

275 : 30. — Crockford. The house on St. James's Street 
that is now used by the Devonshire Club, was formerly a 
famous gambling house kept by one Crockford. 

276 : 2.— John Sterling (1806-44). He is now for the 
most part remembered as Coleridge's disciple and Carlyle's 
friend. Carlyle's Life of Sterling appeared in 1851 ; the 
closing paragraph suggests vividly Sterling's peculiar 
charm : " Here, visible to myself, for some while, was a 
brilliant human presence, distinguishable, honorable, and 
lovable amid the dim common populations ; among the 
million little beautiful, once more a beautiful human soul ; 
whom I, among others, recognized and lovingly walked 
with, while the 5^ears and the hours were." 

276 : 15. — Leigh Hunt (1784-1859). Libeler of the 
Prince Regent ; author of Rimini ; inveterate man of let- 
ters ; friend of Keats and Shelley and Carlyle ; cherisher 



34^ NOTES. 

of the unpractical ; the first thorough-going English anti- 
Philistine, 

276 : 11.— Old Rogers (1763-1855). The banker-poet, 
patron of art and letters, and epigrammatic diner-out. His 
Pleasures of Memory appeared in 1792. 

279 : 7. — English Traits. Emerson's account of his 
visit to England (1856), Hawthorne's Our Old Home 
appeared in 1863. 

281 : 21. — Senaftcour (1770-1846). Cf. 27 : 6, 97 : 4, and 
103 : 15. 

282 : 3. — Marcus Aurelius (i 21-180). The great Impe- 
rial moralist of Rome, See the Thoughts of Marcus 
Aurelius, translated by George Long (1862), See also 
Arnold's Essays, i. 344, and Walter Pater's Marius the 
Epictirean. 

285 : 10. — Disposed . . . to trust himself. The 
dangers of arbitrariness and of self-will are, of course, the 
burden of Arnold's whole discourse in Culture a7id Anar- 
chy. Cf, Selections, p. 181 ff., and especially Doing as ojte 
Likes, chap, ii, of Culture and Anarchy. 

286 : II, — The hour when he appeared. Emerson's 
work was part of the "Liberal movement" in English 
literature. He strove to free the individual from the bond- 
age of old traditions and to give him the courage of new 
feelings and aspirations. Only through over-emphasis on 
the rights of the individual was the richer emotional and 
spiritual development of the later centur^^ possible. For 
this reason Arnold approves Emerson's incitement to 
" self-will," 

287 : 19. — Brook Farm. The Brook Farm "association 
was simply an attempt to return to first principles, to 
plant the seeds of a new social order, founded on respect 
for the dignity, and sympathy with the aspirations of 
man. , , It was felt at this time, 1842, that, in order to 
live a religious and moral life in sincerit3^ it was necessary 
to leave the world of institutions, and to reconstruct the 
social order from new beginnings. A farm was bought in 
close vicinity to Boston (at West Roxbury) ; agriculture 



NOTES. 347 

was made the basis of the life, as bringing man into direct 
and simple relations with nature, and restoring labor to 
honest conditions. To a certain extent, . . . the princi- 
ple of community in property was recognized." O. B. 
Frothingham's Tra7iscende7italism, p. 164. The experi- 
ment lasted from 1842 to the burning of the Phalanstery or 
large common dwelling, in 1847. Among the members of 
the community were George Ripley, Charles A. Dana, 
Margaret Fuller, and for a time Hawthorne. Cf. Haw- 
thorne's notes of his experiences at Brook Farm in Froth' 
Ingham's Tra7iscendentalis?n, p. 171. 

287 : 20, — Dissidence of dissent. Cf. 163 : 5. 

290 : II. — What if t ho II wert bo7^7t. See Sa7'tor Resar- 
tiis, bk. ii. ch. ix. : "I asked myself : What is this that, 
ever since earliest years, thou hast been fretting and fum- 
ing, and lamenting and self-tormenting, on account of ? 
Say it in a word : is it not because thou art not happy ? 
Because the thou (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently 
honored, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared-for ? 
Foolish soul ! What Act of Legislature was there that thou 
shouldst be Happy ? A little while ago thou hadst no right 
to be Sit all. What if thou wert born," etc. Arnold's con- 
trast between Carlyle on the one hand, and Augustine and 
Epictetus on the other, is open to misconception. Carlyle 
expressly admits in a passage directly following that quoted 
in the text, that " Blessedness " is the highest good of 
human life, — a Blessedness won through self-denial and 
"Love of God "; it would not be easy logically to distin- 
guish this Blessedness from the delight or happiness which 
Epictetus and Augustine admit as legitimate ends of 
human action. The pursuit of happiness in any Epicurean 
sense, all three moralists condemn. Still, the force of 
Arnold's contrast remains unimpaired in so far as Carlyle 
more than the other two moralists fails to portray the 
actual pleasures or the golden self-possession of assured 
spiritual life. 

290 : I'i.—Act we 77iust. Cf. St. Augustine's account of 
the Roman Goddess Felicity in the City of God, bk. iv. 



348 NOTES. 

chap. 23 : " For who wishes anything for any other reason 
than that he may become happy ? . . . No one is found 
who is willing to be unhappy. . . For there is not any- 
one who would resist Felicity, except, which is impossible, 
one who might wish to be unhappy." 

290 : 15. — Epic fetus. Cf. the Disco inses of Epic fetus 
(Higginson's translation), bk, iii. chap. vii. : " For it is 
impossible that good should lie in one thing, and rational 
enjoyment in another." The underlying purpose of the 
Discourses is adequately to define " rational enjoyment " 
and to distinguish between the rational and the irrational. 
" The only way to real prosperity (let this rule be at 
hand morning, noon, and night) is a resignation of things 
uncontrollable by will. . . Mindful of this, enjoy the 
present and accept all things in their season." Bk. iv. 
chap. iv. 

293 : 4. — T/ie paramount duty. Cf. bk. iv. of the Excur- 
sion, where the Wanderer expounds to the Solitary the 
dependence of life on Hope. 

" We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love ; 
And, even as these are well and wisely fixed, 
In dignity of being we ascend." 



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Exposition. 

Edited by Hammond Lamont, Instructor in Harvard. xxiv-f-iSo pp. 
Includes : Development of a Brief; G. C. V. Holmes on the Steam- 
engine; Huxley on the Physical Basis of Life; Bryce on the U. S. 
Constitution; "The Nation " on the Unemployed; Wm. Archer on 
Albery's "Apple Blossoms"; Matthew Arnold on Wordsworth; etc. 

Argumentation. Modern. 

Edited by George P. Baker, Instructor in Harvard College. i6mo. 

186 pp. 
Lord Chatham's speech on the withdrawal of troops from 
Boston, Lord Mansfield's argument in the Evans case, the first 
letter of Junius, the first of Huxley's American addresses on evo- 
lution, Erskine's defence of Lord George Gordon, an address by 
Beecher in Liverpool during the cotton riots, and specimen brief. 

Argumentation. Classic. 

Edited by George P. Baker. 

Postage ten per cent additional. 
HENRY HOLT & CO., 29 W. 23d St., New York. 



PAN COAST'S 

INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH 
LITERATURE. 

473 PP- i6mo. $1.25, net. 

** It assumes a study of and not about English literature^ 
it assumes that one author differeth from another in glory and 
influence, and that in an introductory course only those of 
predominant influence can be studied." — Prof. E. E. Went- 
worth, Vassar College. 

It treats of movements — is not merely a catalogue of names 
and a record of critical ratings. " Not even the dullest pupil 
can study it without feeling the historical and logical continuity 
of English literature," — Natio?i. 

It describes the political and social conditions of the suc- 
cessive periods; notes foreign as well as domestic influences; 
emphasizes the relations of literature to history. 

" Its criticism is of a kind to stimulate investigation 
i-ather than to supplant it." — A. J. George, Newton [Mass.) 
High School. 

The nineteenth century, for the first time in such a book, 
receives its fair share of attention. 

In style it is "interesting," says Prof. Winchester of 
Wesleyan University (Ct.), " readable and stimulating," says 
Prof. Hart of Cornell, " interesting and sensible," says Prof, 
Sampson of l7idiana University, " attractive," says Prof. Gil- 
more of Rochester University, " well written," says Prof. Czar- 
nomska of Smith College. 

It is fully equipped with teaching apparatus. The 
" Study Lists " give references for collateral reading, and, 
in the case of the most suitable works, hints and suggestive 
questions. Comparative chronological tables, a literary map 
gf England, and a plan of Shakespeare's London are included. 



FRANCKE'S SOCIAL FORCES IN 
GERMAN LITERATURE. 

By Prof. KUNO FRANCKE of Harvard. 

577 PP- 8vo. $2.00, net. 

A critical, philosophical, and historical account of German 
literature that is "destined to be a standard work for both 
professional and general uses " (Dial), and that is now being 
translated in Germany. Its wide scope is shown by the fact 
that it begins with the sagas of the fifth century and ends with 
Hauptmann's mystical play " Hannele," written in 1894. 

" The range of vision is comprehensive, but the details are 
not obscured. The splendid panorama of German literature is 
Spread out before us from the first outb^lrst of heroic song in the 
dim days of the migrations, down to the latest disquieting pro- 
ductions of the Berlin school. We owe a debt of gratitude to 
the author who has led us to a commanding height and pointed 
out to us the kingdoms of the spirit which the genius of Ger- 
many has conquered. The frequent departures from the ortho- 
dox estimates are the result of the new view-point. They are 
often a distinct addition to our knowledge. . . . To the study 
of German literature in its organic relation to society this book 
is the best contribution in English that has yet been published." 
— 77ie Nation. 

*' It is neither a dry summary nor a wearisome attempt to 
include every possible fact. ... It puts the reader in centre 
of the vital movements of the time. . . . One often feels as 
if the authors treated addressed themselves personally to him; 
the discourse coming not through bygone dead books, but 
rather through living men." — Prof. Friedrich Paulsen of Univer' 
sity of Berlin. 

"A noble contribution to the history of civilization, and 
valuable not only to students of German literature, but to all 
who are interested in the progress of our race." — The Hon. 
Andreiu D. White, cx-President of Cornell University. 

" For the first time German literature has been depicted 
with a spirit that imparts to it organic unity . . . rich in well- 
weighed, condensed judgments of writers . . . not mere re- 
wordings of the opinions of standard critics. . . . The style 
is clear, crisp, and unobtrusive; . . . destined to be a standard 
work for bothi2roiesf|k)nal .,Mi4|l;eneral uses." — The Dial. 

HENRY HOLT & CO., 29 W. 23D St., New York. 



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